I heard from my oncology nurse that the key to dealing with the insurance companies is to be clear that ALL of the nutrition you're getting is coming from the tube feed. If they can make the argument that you are also feeding yourself another way (like making your own protein shakes or eating soup some of the time), they will be more likely to turn you down for coverage--you've given them some kind of loophole.

We have been getting samples of Prosure and such from the radiation oncology nurse who gets them from the distributors who come by with samples. Since the facility just opened recently, she had a lot of samples from distributors, and that stuff through the tube has amde up about 1/2 my diet for the last couple of weeks. But now she's out of stuff to give me so this coming week we will do our battle with the insurance company over this.

Last week for me was the battle with the prescription drug coverage folks (a different group) over whether they would cover more than 15 Zofran tablets for me each month. Zofran is the *only* anti-nausea med that works for me against the Amifostine nausea but I guess it's brand new on the market and very expensive and they wanted to tell me once I had 15 this month, I had to pay for the rest myself (would have been 100s of extra dollars out of pocket).

I was lucky in that the medical oncologists' office got involved right away and the L.P.N. made a couple of calls to help me and explain to the insurance rep that I would NOT be needing 15 more pills NEXT month but I DID need 30 pills THIS month.