Pamela and chemotherapy costs insurance isn’t paying for.

Hi,

I'm Pamela Rico and I am a six-year survivor of Multiple Myeloma. It attacked me in March 2019 when I had debilitating mid-back pain and then major back surgery, which found two vertebrae in my thoracic spine destroyed by the myeloma. I have been on five different chemos in the last six years, and this last one, Tecvayli, has worked the best. I am in almost total remission for the last year. We'll know in July if I am continuing in remission. It looks like it will be a yes!

January, unfortunately, brought a major problem to my household. My local Cancer Center did not bill the chemotherapy that I received twice in January and once in February until the end of March. This caused me to have $8,900 worth of bills that I was not expecting. I have a grant from Johnson and Johnson to help offset the costs with Tecvayli, but it only pays for the Tecvayli injection itself. If the hospital would have billed within 2 to 3 weeks, the Tecvayli would have paid for that $8,900 out-of-pocket expense, and I would not be paying anything out of pocket. However, the hospital did not follow through on this. Now I cannot access those funds because Johnson and Johnson does not cover all the supporting costs of chemotherapy—only their drug. So I am now stuck with a huge amount of bills that are now starting to come due, and I have no way of paying it. I have taken off the last eight or nine months because of severe fatigue and chemo fog. This is a huge hardship for my family, and I have tried to locate funds, but most of the available funds are closed or they’re not eligible for myeloma cancer patients. Myeloma is a rare cancer, so there are not a lot of funds out there for us patients.

I have put this off for a few weeks because I am also dealing with a blood clot that has come up in the last 3 to 4 weeks, and it is very painful. I also have bone-on-bone knee pain, which no one will operate on in the Fresno Clovis area. I’ve had two oncologist-orthopedics tell me that I need to go to Stanford for a total knee replacement. I’m too high of an infection risk for the local hospitals. And my insurance is not covering Stanford. They will not allow me to go there, and they’ve not given me options to another university, so we may be looking at trying to change insurance probably towards the end of the year if I can, so that I can go back to Stanford and have them take care of this knee. We are in the process of attempting to get one of the Synviscs approved, but the insurance is balking on it. That is going to be another cost of about $2,000 that I didn’t add into the fund. I am hoping that we can put in a grievance or an appeal and get this covered, but it’s not looking very promising.

From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate each and every one of you. May God bless you all.

Pamela Rico

ps that is Noodles, my loving Cocker Spaniel