Hi, I'm the Jan part of alnjan, I know Al has already put a little bit about me, but I thought I'd just add to it a little...
As Al said, I was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in the right femur (that's the big bone in the top of the leg, it's surprising how many folks don't know that, so I'm not trying to be a smart arse or anything). In the nine weeks from the first xray to the 13 hour op where I got a new leg, there were countless tests and scans, a lot of which weren't covered by medicare at the time. We're talking hundreds of dollars for each test. So being a public or private patient would still have meant we had to pay for it all; having private health insurance meant we could claim some of it back.
The big difference though, for my particular circumstance was the LEG I ended up with. The cancer was so advanced, that I was having surgery asap, private or public, that wouldn't have made much difference...at least I hope not, because I was pretty damn close to not seeing my kids birthdays apparently. The big difference was the way they went about fixing me up. You see, I now have someone else's bone in my leg.
I had experimental surgery, where 23cm of my own femur was removed and a donor-bone grafted in to replace it. My fibula (the small bone from the back of the calf) was also removed and grafted alongside the donor-bone to provide live bone from the top to the bottom of my leg. A bloody huge plate holds it all in securely from hip to knee, where the pronged end is bent at right angles and belted into holes drilled into the top of my knee. I had to go back a few months later to have the top graft redone, as the graft hadn't taken the first time around, and a second plate was put over it to help hold everything as still as possible.
In the public system, IF I was lucky I would have had a metal rod put in the place of my femur, which would have had to be removed within 5 years because the ends of the rod would have worn away at the bone shaft to which it would be anchored. And then my leg would be amputated. But I would have had a few more years of having a full leg. If I wasn't so lucky, my leg would have been amputated there and then.
The care I received during the two weeks in the private hospital was unbelievable. Each nurse only had 4 patients per shift; one high-needs and ranging down to the fourth one due for discharge. I had my own room and private bathroom. Alan was allowed to be with me from sun-up to late at night - I can never express how important his continued presence and support was to me, and I'm grateful he was allowed to stay with me.
And that's the difference between the two systems. And do you know they are STILL amputating people's legs for similar bone tumours? STILL! WHY? The only answer that comes to mind is the difference between the public and the private health systems.
Eighteen years later, and I'm still walking around on my donated bone. I've had several 'maintenance operations' over that time, and will continue to do so all my life. But I've lived to see my kids grow, I've played backyard cricket with them - although watching me try to run is a belly-laugh, I've even walked our daughter "down the aisle, with Al on the other side of her. And I'm looking forward to seeing our son married soon. These are things that almost slipped away from me.
I know my story is on the other end of the 'normal day to day' range, but trust me, these things happen. We had been talking about dropping our health cover only a few months before all my 'leg business' happened. Now, of course, we don't dare drop it, because the mechanics of my leg require specialist attention - even the simple knee replacement I will need in the future won't be so simple, as they will have to design a special joint to hold my plate anchored, and Lord knows what will happen to the fibula stump where all the muscles in my calf were anchored. But that's in the future, and I refuse to worry about it. For now, there's a lot of Australia to explore, and I can do it on my own two legs...well, my own one and a half legs and a borrowed other half! ;-)
Jan
xxxx