Dr. Goslin’s sidekick, the amazing and trusty Donna, emailed me this morning.

“Cigna denied the prior authorization request for Athena. Dr. Goslin did a peer to peer review, and they still denied it. It is unfortunate that this got dragged out so long, only to have them deny it in the end. I am sorry.”

Athena, of course, being the company that does the genetic testing. We were going to see if I had the markers to allow me to participate in the bulk of clinical trials going on. And Cigna said no. Even after Dr. Goslin explained to their faces why it was important. And it IS important.

I feel defeated. Like…this test? And the ability to participate in the best research going on? It gave me hope that maybe my fucking disease might be USEFUL to someone. We won’t see a cure for this in my lifetime, but goddammit I wanted to be a datapoint at least in GETTING there. I want to HELP.

I don’t know how much the test costs. The last one was nearly $12,000. So yeah, I won’t be able to just DO the test on my own. I am beyond frustrated. I am angry, defeated, disappointed, crushed, depressed, all of this and everything else.

I want this fucking disease to mean SOMETHING to SOMEONE. To get SOME good out of it. To be useful.

And now instead of having the chance to be a data point, I’m relegated to be a statistic.