Until a few days ago I haven't posted here in almost a year. Thought I'd might share some things with the board. My wife was diagnosed with NHL (Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma) and her specific type Follicular Lymphoma about four years ago. She went through all the conventional treatments as well as an Auto Bone marrow transplant. Each treatment failed within the year and every time one fails you have less options to choose from. In August this past year, my wife's remaining choices were a Allow Bone marrow transplant and 3 different Phase 1 clinic trials. The Doctors recommended doing one of the clinical trials. Once you have an Allow bone marrow transplant you no longer have your own immune system and it is considered your last option when it comes to this disease. Just to let everyone know its not that easy to get to be a patient in a Phase 1 clinical trial. Many state's don't have large cancer institutions and if your treatment is failing in these states you need to be referred to a regional cancer center, (if you are lucky or young enough to be). After you are evaluated at the regional cancer center, which they look at your comorbidities, physical condition and compiled charts through the years. They determine if you qualify for their study. My wife qualified for all of the three Phase 1 clinical trials that were offered to her (she was young with no comorbidities). The next step is to be submitted to the insurance company for approval. Most all clinical trials pay for their own scientific processes, but will not pay for the pre and post follow up procedures involved in the patient care. After about 6 weeks of waiting, the insurance company denied her treatment in any Phase 1 clinical trial. This particular company was Blue Cross Blue Shield. They would only cover conventional treatments in this particular plan, and please keep in mind I had the top of the line premium plan offered to me by the Hospital at which I worked. It was devastating to say the least. The Clinical trial said they would still give her treatment but they would require payment upfront which was well over $100,000.00 to give you an idea of the cost of pre and post procedures. At this point it became my opinion that Clinical trials were only available to those doing very well financially. By Fate this same week, a Hospital I worked for 22 years had called and asked if I would be interested in coming back to work for them. I asked about their health insurance company (it was through Aetna). They got me in contact with their care coordinator and I explained the situation to them. To make a long story short, this company's insurance did cover the clinical trial. My wife began the clinical trial November 20 2016. She had 45% bone marrow burden stage 4 B-cell,with extensive lymphadenopathy. My wife returned home January 19 2017. She is in complete remission (CR) with no cancerous cells seen in her bone marrow and no lymphadenopathy seen on her PET scan. She was the 12 patient treated for this disease at the time of her treatment. The point I'm trying to make here, is that these clinical trials do not run as smooth as some people would like to think. I hope with the recent changes in the government and hopefully in health care plans that these clinical trials are made easier for patients to participate. I'm very fortunate that my wife was able to have her treatment, its certainly been a long road. I have faith in BPTH and the path they have chosen in their work to help find new cures of fighting this disease. My wife was not treated by any BPTH products, she had Car T cell therapy, but it would be nice to see BPTH delivery products being used in the future for this disease. $BPTH$ GLTA
AI
