Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.
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Costs of Managing Myeloma
Even with health insurance the costs of managing myeloma can be steep. As a MM patient who ignored the financial side of managing myeloma I can attest to the importance of understanding the basics of treating multiple myeloma.
Call me naive. When I was first diagnosed I was consumed with my incurable blood cancer and I thought that my health insurance covered all of my medical costs. Not even close.
If you are a newly diagnosed MM patient or caregiver and you clicked on “costs of managing myeloma” then you are headed in the right direction.
I linked the video below because it highlights what I consider to be a pretty complete list of areas that most MM patients will confront.
Understanding the Costs of Cancer Care
While the video above and your health insurance will speak to your FDA approved, conventional treatments, there is the entire area of non-conventional therapies such as:
- Antineoplaston Therapy
- Exercise
- Nutritional supplementation
- HBOT
- Acupuncture
- Massage
- A psychologist or psychiatrist
- others…
I chose each one of the above therapies both because none of them are covered by most insurance policies and because I’ve done/do each therapy daily/weekly and have since my diagnosed in 1994.
I am a long-term MM survivor who has seen the good, the bad and the ugly of managing MM. And yes, I made lots of mistakes along the way.
Email me at David.PeopleBeatingCancer@gmail.com with questions about managing your costs of managing multiple myeloma.
hang in there,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
The Costs of Adult Multiple Myeloma
If you’re diagnosed with multiple myeloma or being tested for it, you want your full focus to be on slowing its spread and relieving your symptoms. Sometimes stress about treatment costs can make that hard to do.
The sooner you create a plan for managing myeloma’s costs, the sooner you can start treatment with a clearer head. Here’s a breakdown of the costs you could face:
Diagnosis
Based on your symptoms, your doctor may give you tests to find out if you have multiple myeloma. These can include:
- Blood tests
- Urine tests
- Removal of a bone marrow sample to send to a lab
- X-rays, MRIs, or CT scans for bone problems
Doctor Visits
If results show you have multiple myeloma, your doctor (a specialist called an oncologist) may want to monitor your condition without treatment until your symptoms change. Or you may start a treatment plan to relieve pain, control complications, and slow the disease’s progress.
Once treatment begins, you should expect to visit your doctor and possibly other specialists every 3-5 weeks. After treatment, your team will follow you closely so they can identify signs that the disease is getting worse. You’ll have a follow-up in 3-6 months.
One study shows the average cost of an oncologist outpatient visit in the U.S. ranges from $198 to $391, depending on condition. Those visits are covered by private insurance and Medicare…
Medications
If your doctor decides you need medication, the price tag of cancer drugs can be staggering. Cancer drug therapies often involve a combination of two or three medications rather than just one. In one study, the total cost of a multi-medication therapy for people with multiple myeloma — before insurance — ranged from about $74,000 to as much as $256,000…
Radiation and Other Procedures
If medications and chemotherapy aren’t completely effective, your doctor may use radiation. This treatment quickly kills or shrinks cancerous cells in areas where they’re weakening bones, such as your spine.
Another option is a stem cell transplant, in which a doctor takes blood-forming stem cells from your body and then injects them back into your body after you’ve had chemotherapy. Then they travel to your bones and start rebuilding marrow. Your doctor will typically consider this only if you’re younger than 65, or between 65-75 but very fit.
CAR T-cell therapy is similar to stem cell transplant. During this therapy, certain immune cells are taken from your blood. Then they’re altered in a lab and injected back into your body to help your immune system attack cancer cells.
Reliable statistics about radiation and stem cell transplant costs are hard to find, but online blogs and articles describe costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, before insurance applies. A CAR T-cell treatment can cost more than $373,000…
Tackling Costs of Your Cancer Treatment
The costs of multiple myeloma treatment can be huge even if you have quality health insurance. The American Cancer Society website offers several resources that can help:
- Assistance paying for prescription medications. A list of public and private programs that help pay for people’s medications or let them buy at discounted prices. Many pharmaceutical companies also offer medication assistance programs.
- Strategies for handling medical bills. Tips for negotiating with hospitals, medical practices, and insurance companies.
- Help with covering non-medical expenses. A list of programs that can help defray housing, transportation, caregiver, and other bills.
Another option to help bring down the costs of treating multiple myeloma is to enroll in a clinical trial. In a typical clinical trial, a health care provider or pharmaceutical company asks enrollees to try new drugs or drug combinations, new surgical procedures or devices, or new ways to use current treatments.