Cancerous expenses.

When I was first diagnosed with colo-rectal cancer (CRC) in the first week of October 2008, a few people took liberty to place warnings to me as to the bad situations one might get into, one of them including the financial one! Though I had always learned that deadly diseases such as cancer are too expensive to afford, I had never expected that I myself would fall into the trap, within one year, of ever increasing expenses week-by-week like a cancerous growth of the bad cells in the body!

First, with a personal savings corpus of around Rs.6 Lakhs, I started to get treated last October immediately after diagnosis. The first major chunk of expense was that for IMRT aka radiotherapy, which costed me around Rs.1.5 Lakhs. When I added other expenses like staying in Chennai for the treatment and other sundry complementary medical expenses such as standard chemotherapy and associated tests, the total expenses went to Rs.3 Lakhs alone in Chennai.

Later, I took a two-month rest during which I spent another Rs.1 Lakh on medical maintenance expenses, which include an expensive PET CT scan.

I came back to Bangalore in mid-January 2009, and I had to start spending money on a series of expensive tests for further diagnosis. These tests and other procedures started to eat into my savings and once my savings were completely exhausted, I took the medical insurance route provided by my employer (i.e.,IBM). A whole Rs.12 Lakhs was spent on the chemotherapy in Apollo Hospitals, Bangalore, out of which Rs. 10 Lakhs was borne by the insurer and the remaining by my savings again. (My savings had a small traction since I managed to save somehow out of my salary for all those months, even though the living costs in Bangalore put before me severe constraints!)

Then, in what is called the Phase-3 of my expenditure, I had a surgery, which costed my around Rs.1 Lakh and then now the chemotherapy again at the BIO. The chemotherapy protocol at the BIO, unlike that which I had in Apollo, is a weekly session including Cetuximab (weekly dose), Irinotecan (one in three weeks) and Xeloda (once in three weeks). The weekly dose of Cetuximab itself would cost around Rs. 75000 every week (a 100 mg dose costing around Rs.19000)! So, in effect, it costs around Rs.80000 per week of chemotherapy session!

To meet the expenses, I gave a serious thought to all the available options including exercising my ESOPs in IBM, the length of the process though forbid me to taking that route. I finally decided to raise loans from my banker, friends and relatives. And, lo! my debts are now reaching Rs.12 Lakhs and most of my salary component would go in servicing this debt! :( And, a bad news is that my salary account would stop get credited with the salary from December this year! :(

Given that my insurance limit (of Rs.10 Lakhs) for this year already was met, financing the medical expenses is now another major issue that I need to tackle with along with getting well on my health front! (For a glimpse of my expenses, I give below a few figures:

Total expenses until now (from October 2008 to date, including radiotherapy in Chennai, Avastin-based chemotherapy at Apollo Hospitals, Bangalore and the now on-going chemotherapy at BIO): Rs. 32 Lakhs.
Expected expenses for the further treatment: Rs. 8 - 10 Lakhs (including chemotherapy and post-chemo surgery)
Loans : Rs. 11 Lakhs (including a personal loan of Rs.8 Lakhs and the remaining from friends/relatives)
Cash at hand: Rs.2 Lakhs)