So I had to pick fast after diagnosis in June. VA screened me, found it, and by August I was in the OR. But before that I looked at a few places and honestly most of the marketing stuff is noise.
What actually matters: how many meso cases do they do per year. Not hundreds, I mean actual mesothelioma cases. The places that do ten, fifteen a year versus the ones doing one or two. That's the difference between a surgeon who knows the anatomy cold and one who's reading the textbook the night before.
Second thing is whether they do multimodal treatment on site. Pleurectomy, chemo, the whole thing. I didn't want to get bounced between three different hospitals because that's three different teams and nobody's talking to each other.
Third is where their surgeons trained and how long they've been doing meso specifically. My guy was at MD Anderson for years before he came to the VA facility here in Norfolk. That matters more than the hospital's marketing budget.
Don't get caught up in amenities or how nice the waiting room is. Ask them straight up: how many meso surgeries last year. What's your five year survival rate. Can I talk to someone who had the same stage and surgery I'm looking at. If they won't answer those questions directly, walk.
I got lucky with timing and location but yeah the metrics that matter are simple. Case volume, multimodal capability, surgeon experience. Everything else is secondary.