thanks for the feedback and suggestions, everybody. we finally heard from "city of hope" yesterday. they've decided they're not going to admit my sister and not even give her an appointment for second opinion. they didn't even talk to us directly, but talked to my sister's oncologist! upon his persistence! the bottom line, they've said, is that they don't think they have any protocol that could help my sister. knowing the urgency, they probably could have told us this over two weeks ago when they had all the medical records, rather than running us around, keeping up our "hope" (oh, the irony!) and wasting our time and energy on numerous phone calls and faxes.

i don't knwo where they got that name from or why. whether it's a problem of the system or of the people who work in it, i simply find the extent of disrespect and disregard unacceptable and unjustifiable. before i came to l.a. i found what i heard from my family here about their dealings with "city of hope" quite hard to believe. after having dealt with the case worker since i've been here and being lied to in my face twice, i can tell you that if we didn't have other priorities right now, i would go after them with some vengence. anyway, we're looking at other options including the ones mentioned here.

keep us in your good thoughts.