[cathybee1]

Danny, I understand your frustration. I would like to second Hopeful's recommendation about the second opinion with a specialist. You are young (compared to a lot of us here) but what you have going on is not something you want to let Kaiser dink around with. Especially when your diagnosis is not clear cut. My mother was a Kaiser patient. While she did not have a bone marrow problem, she had some "complicated" medical issues and Kaiser had her wait for months sometimes between a test and follow ups. She went to UCLA for a second opinion, it cost her in the $300 range. But after the UCLA visit, it was like the Kaiser floodgates opened. All the tests recommended by UCLA were done within a few weeks, and follow ups happened very quickly. It was clear to me that UCLA carries a lot of weight with Kaiser.

My husband has a bone marrow disease that has been difficult to diagnose. We considered City of Hope, but went to UCLA because of Dr. Paquette's reputation. My husband has seen Dr. Paquette twice, and likes him a lot. Dr. Paquette has a clinical practice as well as being a researcher, and he is very approachable. If you schedule a consult with him, he will personally look at your bone marrow biopsies, order additional tests if necessary, which you can have done at Kaiser, and provide you with a written report in a few weeks. It took us about a month from the time we first called to get worked into his schedule.