Is Cancer Not Considered an Emergency?

I'm left to wonder if cancer is not considered an emergency, if it is left out of the practice of rushing same-day treatment and care to a person whose life is on the line.

If a person's heart fails them, we rush them to the hospital. I had a friend tell me of being life flighted to the hospital for a rare muscle or skin disease. We spare no expense when life is on the line, not expecting insurance to be in place before the life is saved . . .

Except when it comes to cancer. Or, so it seems to me.

Oh, there are times when cancer is detected just in time, and patient is rushed through treatment just in time. But, as a practice, not so. The practice is more along the lines of the cancer being suspected, maybe even diagnosed, and then they schedule a ultrasound, then schedule a biopsy, then wait for the biopsy results, and then wait for the insurance to approve the treatment.

While patients wait for treatment, they sometimes die. Family and friends lament that the cancer was not discovered earlier, in time to save their loved one, but they should be more attentive to how long it took from the time cancer was suspected to when treatment took place -- or was scheduled to take place.

It takes weeks, sometimes.

I think of a lady who was told she had one of two forms of cancer, and that one of them was very treatable. She ended up with the "very treatable" form, but by the time doctors got around to treatment, her condition had spiraled down.

Why, I ask, could not the ultrasound, biopsy, and first treatment have been achieved within a day? Isn't that emergency care, doing everything you can to save a life as quickly as possible, not on a scheduled basis, but on an emergency basis?

When death lurks at the doorstep, don't we usually hospitalize the patient, so they can be watched and given every medical advantage? Kidney failure? I've had a friend hospitalized through his final week on earth while having kidney failure. While it was perhaps a foregone conclusion he would die, they took him in and monitored him till his death.

But, it does not seem common to hospitalize a person for cancer before the time of the treatment. It does not seem common to rush them to the hospital for treatment the day the cancer is suspected. Why would they be? If the treatment is to be done on a scheduled basis, and not on an emergency time table, why have them just sit in the hospital waiting? Nothing can be done until the point of treatment, and if the treatment isn't immediate, but rather is days or weeks away, why have them just pass time in the hospital awaiting the day of treatment?

I say the treatment should be immediate. People die while waiting for treatment. This should not be acceptable.