I'm still not completely out of the woods as far as being secure that my prostate cancer is completley in remission. I'm 56 and there's still time for me to seek other treatment if turns out the brachytherapy doesn't work. I, too, had to be my own health advocate. Every 'Mericuhn urologst I consulted wanted to immediately slice and dice me, without even looking at my complete medical file (X-rays, CAT scan, blood work, sonogram tomography, and lab results of my biopsies). I'm happy with my choice of care outside of the USA (plus it's saved me a ton of money). However, it galls me no end when I hear the USA medical establishment and its clients cry wolf about alternative treatments not yet certified by the FDA and use anecdotal accounts that patients who sought alternative treatments are now complaining of complications or that the condition has returned.
For example, HIFU (high intensity focused ultrasound) is used in Canada, the UK, Japan, many EU countries, México, Chile, Brazil, and now Argentina. I keep reading sad laments posted on the Prostate Help web site by 83, 84, on up to 86 year-old 'Merichuns about how their prostate cancer has returned and how they should have gone for the original slice-and-dice recommended by their doctors in the USA instead of HIFU. First, at that age their cancers were high-end Stage II or full-blown Stage III. Even radical prostatectomies and highbeam radiation combined with chemo would have had a hard time wiping out the disease, as well as left them completely incontinent. Plus they are 84 to 86 years-old! What the Hell are they expecting? To live forever?
As far as Ritter's situation is concerned, even though I'm relatively unsympathetic to most physicians in the USA, medicine is as much an art as it is a science. Certainly, there are amazing things that have been developed to monitor and care for all sorts of cardiac conditions. But there are no guarantees. Ritter's wife is going after something that may make her and her attorneys feel better, but it'll just up the price of good, affordable health care for everyone else in the USA.
My long-time sugar booger of 9 years who had health insurance that covered him for everything including being run over by free-range chickens, up and died on me one afternoon after complaining about having a headache all day. It was an anyeurism that eventually blew in the back of his head. He'd never been sick a day in his life, or at least during the 9 years we were together. During the 15 minutes it took for me to wrangle him into my Jeep and to the hospital three blocks away, he was pronounced DOA once they pulled him out of my car and onto a guerney. Hell, I'd of liked to sue the Universe, but didn't.
Life is life and its only guarantee is that it will end for all of us eventually.