Does anyone have experience with Kaiser Permanente?

Let's just say that after all of my experiences with Kaiser I wish they would get a GOOD melanoma specialist.  Dr. Gailani was the oncologist who consulted with me after my initial diagnosis, and I agree with the earlier comment on this thread that you should be glad he's gone.  

After my initial removal of my tumor from my cheek in 2007 (which was over 4 mm in depth) I was given the tracer for the sentinel lymph node, and both times the tracer failed to work.  I still asked for a lymph node dissection at that point.  I specifically asked Dr. Gailani to make a recommendation for it.  He refused. Kaiser then refused to approve a dissection surgery for me.  I appealed, to no avail.    Later that year, I ended up with a palpable lymph node under my chin.  I finally got the lymph node dissection that I should have had earlier that year, which was done by Dr. Young Oh, a great surgeon and a compassionate and caring doctor.

In my subsequent year of "treatment" with Dr. Gailani, he began to set me up for CT scans.  On some of my scans I apparently displayed some white spots on my lungs and what is now known to be a benign tumor on my liver.  Without doing biopsies on either of these areas, he proceeded to announce to me that I was stage IV melanoma and wrote in my charts that it had spread to my lungs and liver. Of course, you can imagine the effect this had on me and how it terrorized me and nearly caused me to have a breakdown.   After a year of watching the lung scans, he concluded that if these spots on my lungs were melanoma, they were growing so slowly that they might kill me when I was 90.  Once again, making wild conclusions about things that were never biopsied.  I stopped going to any appointments with him in 2009.  He left his wild conclusions in my chart, and my GP and dermatologist began making concerned inquiries about these weird diagnoses after some time passed, and wrote emails to him and to the oncology department there in Riverside.  My present oncologist has scoffed at some of these things that he wrote in my chart, stating so what if I had some white spots on my lungs, and the tumor on my liver is undoubtedly benign.

In 2008 I had a brain MRI where a lesion was spotted on my cerebellum.  It was followed for awhile, but there was never any growth, so it was concluded that it was NOT a melanoma met.  Once again, Kaiser never offered to biopsy it for me or even to warn me what it could possibly be.  In January of 2016 my MRI showed small growth and edema around the mass, and I finally had a craniotomy in January and was diagnosed with primary grade 2 astrocytoma.  Perhaps the melanoma did alter my DNA to help set up the tumor, but it is not a melanoma metastasis.

Anyway, if you can escape from Kaiser, please do.  I have had excellent surgeons.  My brain surgeon, Dr. Redjal, was terrific.  But some of these doctors at Kaiser are indeed horrible.  I think Dr. Gailani was one of them.

Let's just say that after all of my experiences with Kaiser I wish they would get a GOOD melanoma specialist.  Dr. Gailani was the oncologist who consulted with me after my initial diagnosis, and I agree with the earlier comment on this thread that you should be glad he's gone.  

After my initial removal of my tumor from my cheek in 2007 (which was over 4 mm in depth) I was given the tracer for the sentinel lymph node, and both times the tracer failed to work.  I still asked for a lymph node dissection at that point.  I specifically asked Dr. Gailani to make a recommendation for it.  He refused. Kaiser then refused to approve a dissection surgery for me.  I appealed, to no avail.    Later that year, I ended up with a palpable lymph node under my chin.  I finally got the lymph node dissection that I should have had earlier that year, which was done by Dr. Young Oh, a great surgeon and a compassionate and caring doctor.

In my subsequent year of "treatment" with Dr. Gailani, he began to set me up for CT scans.  On some of my scans I apparently displayed some white spots on my lungs and what is now known to be a benign tumor on my liver.  Without doing biopsies on either of these areas, he proceeded to announce to me that I was stage IV melanoma and wrote in my charts that it had spread to my lungs and liver. Of course, you can imagine the effect this had on me and how it terrorized me and nearly caused me to have a breakdown.   After a year of watching the lung scans, he concluded that if these spots on my lungs were melanoma, they were growing so slowly that they might kill me when I was 90.  Once again, making wild conclusions about things that were never biopsied.  I stopped going to any appointments with him in 2009.  He left his wild conclusions in my chart, and my GP and dermatologist began making concerned inquiries about these weird diagnoses after some time passed, and wrote emails to him and to the oncology department there in Riverside.  My present oncologist has scoffed at some of these things that he wrote in my chart, stating so what if I had some white spots on my lungs, and the tumor on my liver is undoubtedly benign.

In 2008 I had a brain MRI where a lesion was spotted on my cerebellum.  It was followed for awhile, but there was never any growth, so it was concluded that it was NOT a melanoma met.  Once again, Kaiser never offered to biopsy it for me or even to warn me what it could possibly be.  In January of 2016 my MRI showed small growth and edema around the mass, and I finally had a craniotomy in January and was diagnosed with primary grade 2 astrocytoma.  Perhaps the melanoma did alter my DNA to help set up the tumor, but it is not a melanoma metastasis.

Anyway, if you can escape from Kaiser, please do.  I have had excellent surgeons.  My brain surgeon, Dr. Redjal, was terrific.  But some of these doctors at Kaiser are indeed horrible.  I think Dr. Gailani was one of them.

Let's just say that after all of my experiences with Kaiser I wish they would get a GOOD melanoma specialist.  Dr. Gailani was the oncologist who consulted with me after my initial diagnosis, and I agree with the earlier comment on this thread that you should be glad he's gone.  

After my initial removal of my tumor from my cheek in 2007 (which was over 4 mm in depth) I was given the tracer for the sentinel lymph node, and both times the tracer failed to work.  I still asked for a lymph node dissection at that point.  I specifically asked Dr. Gailani to make a recommendation for it.  He refused. Kaiser then refused to approve a dissection surgery for me.  I appealed, to no avail.    Later that year, I ended up with a palpable lymph node under my chin.  I finally got the lymph node dissection that I should have had earlier that year, which was done by Dr. Young Oh, a great surgeon and a compassionate and caring doctor.

In my subsequent year of "treatment" with Dr. Gailani, he began to set me up for CT scans.  On some of my scans I apparently displayed some white spots on my lungs and what is now known to be a benign tumor on my liver.  Without doing biopsies on either of these areas, he proceeded to announce to me that I was stage IV melanoma and wrote in my charts that it had spread to my lungs and liver. Of course, you can imagine the effect this had on me and how it terrorized me and nearly caused me to have a breakdown.   After a year of watching the lung scans, he concluded that if these spots on my lungs were melanoma, they were growing so slowly that they might kill me when I was 90.  Once again, making wild conclusions about things that were never biopsied.  I stopped going to any appointments with him in 2009.  He left his wild conclusions in my chart, and my GP and dermatologist began making concerned inquiries about these weird diagnoses after some time passed, and wrote emails to him and to the oncology department there in Riverside.  My present oncologist has scoffed at some of these things that he wrote in my chart, stating so what if I had some white spots on my lungs, and the tumor on my liver is undoubtedly benign.

In 2008 I had a brain MRI where a lesion was spotted on my cerebellum.  It was followed for awhile, but there was never any growth, so it was concluded that it was NOT a melanoma met.  Once again, Kaiser never offered to biopsy it for me or even to warn me what it could possibly be.  In January of 2016 my MRI showed small growth and edema around the mass, and I finally had a craniotomy in January and was diagnosed with primary grade 2 astrocytoma.  Perhaps the melanoma did alter my DNA to help set up the tumor, but it is not a melanoma metastasis.

Anyway, if you can escape from Kaiser, please do.  I have had excellent surgeons.  My brain surgeon, Dr. Redjal, was terrific.  But some of these doctors at Kaiser are indeed horrible.  I think Dr. Gailani was one of them.