That Is a Big Number

Having nothing better to do with my rainy, disgusting President's Day, I decided to process eighteen months worth of mail. This meant balancing my checkbook, eyeballing all my credit card statements to make sure nothing particularly weird jumped out, and reviewing the last year's worth of EOBs from the SCCA and UW Medicine.

Any guesses what twenty months of cancer treatment costs? In my case (assuming the nine rounds of chemo at GHC cost at least $20K, which seems an extremely safe bet), somewhere just north of half a million dollars. 

Half a million.

Dollars.

A million. Times point five. Five hundred thousand. 

That is two hundred and fifty times what my first car cost, and more than three times what my first house cost. 

Half a million dollars?!?! 

When I was a kid I was a regular viewer of the Six Million Dollar Man, and no doubt wished I could be the six million dollar man. I probably won't make it quite that far, but even if I do, this is definitely not what I had in mind.