Hi all,
My name is Zdenek, I am 33 years old, I live in Czech Republic and I have been diagnosed with CML 6 years ago. I am on 400mg/day Glivec ever since and having deep molecular remission for last 5 years. First I wanted to say thank you to whoever is running this site, I have never posted in here but been following the articles and forum for very long time and it helped me a lot in many ways and I think this is not a wrong place to come with a question i have.
I have been working in Finance for many years and luckily never had any side effects from Glivec and the fact that I was diagnosed with CML luckily did not have any impact on my professional or personal live. I am actually always telling my Doctor that as much as stupid this can sound that I feel like am I living better life than before the diganosis, treating my body and mind better and appreciate every little thing much more...
I have never shared details about being diagnosed with CML to my employer or my manager, I was always afraid that they might look at me different or start to give me reliefs. I did not want any of that and i guess it was part of me trying to fight CML with having mindset of healthy person.
As I work for international corporation company and doing quite fine, I now have an option to go and get promotion and work abroad in our Corporate central HQ which is located in Seattle Washington U.S. - this is something me and my family would really love to do but there is too many questions now about how to handle the move and make sure we don't run into any health related troubles. My Doctor is fully supportive of this move as long as I keep my Glivec treatment under suprevision of a specialist. Here comes the tricky part, in Czech Republic you have to pay mandatory healthcare insurance (which works as % of your salary) and then you have basically free of charge unlimited healthcare. this means I don't have to pay anything on top of what normal healthy person pays, for my Glivec treatment.
Having done some research I found that in US the price of Glivec is crazy high. Way much more that what insurance company pays for it in Czech Republic...
My company is paying for their employees private healthacre program (in Seattle US) but it is not sure how this situation can be handled. I understand this would be treated as some kind of precondition and would fall under some negotiation?. I have obviously shared this with my company now and they are very keen to support me in my move and making sure I get the right treatment.
With that I still wanted to come here and ask if anyone has this kind of experience, moving abroad with family, changing health insurance, Doctor etc. and ask for your experience or advise? I also wanted to ask if there is anyone diagnosed in US (Seattle area) and would be able to share some details about CML treatment in that area, how does the CML treatment work with private health insurance and what are the costs associated?
I really want to make sure that before my family makes this kind of decision we negotiate everything in the right way and don't run into any troubles which could have been avoided.
I know this is a long post and I apologize if this is a wrong place to come and ask this question. I do really appreciate any reply or feedback to my post
thank you very much
Zdenek
PS: I have heard from many people "just stay home its easier" - if I do this I would feel like I have let my diagnosis to impact my life and I am not sure I want to do this.....