Inside the bag was a moist blue towel. Wrapped inside that towel was her right breast. She was hoping it could be reattached.
Doctors in the United States don’t see cancer patients like this every day. A mixture of fear, poverty and lack of paid sick leave had led her to delay cancer treatment for years. Eventually, the tumor grew so large that it cut off the blood supply, causing her right breast to die and fall off, says Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, who saw the woman in the ER that morning in 2003.
In his new book, How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America, Brawley presents the woman’s suffering as a metaphor for a rotting health system that is run, he says, “by the greedy serving the gluttonous.”
How much is too much?
Americans often assume that more is better. But supersizing your healthcare — by getting tests and procedures that you don’t really need and which aren’t
Read More from the Article Source: Full Article
