Being here vs. coming "home"

A few people have asked about proceeding with my treatment here in Salt Lake, as opposed to coming home to Seattle and utilizing the world class Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

I put my reasoning for staying in an email to a friend today, and realized it was probably useful to put it out there for y'all as well.

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Thanks for your concern about my being away from Seattle/family. As you can imagine, I've thought this through and came out with really no good reason to go back to Seattle for treatment.

1) My life is, at least for now, here in Salt Lake. My home, partner, dog and a small but terrific group of friends are here. This feels like more than enough to hold me through this experience.

2) I love my job, and count on working as much I can through treatment. My boss is prepared to be as flexible as she can about my working from home, etc.

2) We have one of six NIH-supported cancer centers in the country here in Utah. It serves the whole inter mountain region. While smaller than the Hutch, it is very highly regarded, extremely well-funded and attracts both staff and patients from around the country. It's pretty sweet, actually.

3) Our house is a traffic-free 1.4 miles from said center, which has free and easy parking. (Fighting Seattle traffic to Hutch and Cancer Care Alliance on a regular basis sounds like a challenge in and of itself.)

4) Sawyer works in the hospital across a sky-bridge from the center and, and in his 3rd year of fellowship has a lot of freedom to attend my appointments.

5) My status as "U of U MD's wife" seems to have helped with assembling a crackerjack team of surgeon, onco, plastic surgeon etc. Everyone specializes in breast cancer and I get nearly all my care in a breast clinic (chemo will be literally next door on the same floor). These folks know we're going to ask a lot of questions and wanting other consults and they all take the time to make sure we get what's going on.

6) While many of my dear friends and family are in Seattle, they are only a 90 minute plane ride - which is only about $280 if purchased 2.5 weeks or more before - away.

(SEGUE RIGHT HERE TO REMIND YOU THAT, EVEN THOUGH I MIGHT NOT BE DOING MUCH SKIING THIS WINTER, SAWYER BOUGHT A PASS AND I COOK GREAT APRES-SKI DINNERS)

And I'm adding a 7) that just came to me. My insurance seems to consider nearly everything and everyone I've encountered here at Huntsman and U of U to be "in network". Everyone cross fingers, touch wood and thank your chosen deity here: my insurance has, so far, been totally easy to deal with and doing the right thing for me.

So I hope this rationale helps those of you who might be worrying about my care and support realize I am, and will be, really well taken care of here.