Our Breasts: Big Medicine's new cash cow

A copy of the letter I sent to my mother's doctors about her treatment for DCIS/breast cancer and the tragic results of that treatment.

June 24, 2007

Texas Cancer Center

Aparna Chacka Kumar

Mark Saunders

910 East Houston, Suites 100/100-C

Tyler, TX 75702

Dr. Charles Perricone

Family Medicine

511 North High

Henderson, TX 75652

To Drs. Chacka , Saunders and Perricone:

I am writing this on behalf of my mother, Sara L. Hafner. She wishes to let you know that you have caused her great harm. She feels she was treated inhumanely and discourteously. On many occasions over the years my mother has told all of her family members that she would never

agree to radiation therapy or chemotherapy for cancer treatment. When she received a diagnosis of DCIS this past winter, she told each of her children that she would not receive radiation. She decided she would have the surgery only, wait six months and see how her health was before making any further decisions about therapy. We were all shocked and dismayed when she told us that she would be undergoing radiation therapy after all. But my mother is an intelligent, strong woman who has generally made wise and informed decisions, and so we didn’t try to dissuade her.

Late in May my mother called me. She didn’t feel good, she was experiencing a lot of pain and she felt troubled and alarmed. Her body, she said, was telling her that something was seriously wrong. And the doctor’s office (your office) was harassing her, calling her and insisting she come back for more radiation treatments. “I stink,” she told me, “I smell like burnt flesh. And I have so much pain. When I tell the doctor and nurses at the clinic, they just pooh-pooh my concerns, they don’t listen, they don’t care.”

On June 4 my mother was admitted to the hospital with elevated blood pressure & dangerously fast heart rate with fibrillation. Mother told me that the doctors at the hospital told her that they suspected the radiation had reached the heart and damaged it. When she was released from the hospital she was told to take aspirin, and given an appointment to see Dr. Perricone on June 28.

Someone please explain this to me: a 79 year old woman being treated with radiation for breast cancer has an emergency admission to a hospital for heart fibrillations, and she is patted on the head and told, take some aspirin and see me in three weeks???? What the hell??

When I next talked to my mother she told me she wished she had never agreed to the radiation. She said her family doctor, Dr. Perricone, had told her he never advised his patients to have radiation therapy. I asked her why he hadn’t said this before she started radiation, and she told me she hadn’t seen him. “He’s a family doctor, not an oncologist. I was told these people were specialists in breast cancer. I thought they knew what they were talking about. But all the papers I signed said that ‘all radiation is experimental’. I wish I had never started this. And the clinic keeps calling me and leaving messages and harassing me about finishing up the radiation. They don’t care about me at all. They don’t listen to me. They don’t care that they hurt me. This whole process has been dehumanizing and brutal.”

On Friday, June 22 at 5:00 p.m., my mother suffered a massive stroke which damaged almost all of the right hemisphere of her brain. Her left side is paralyzed. She will never walk or dance or paint again. She is facing months or years of therapy. She will probably never return to her beloved home and her favorite things. She may lose her home and all her antiques and property in order to provide skilled nursing care for the rest of her life. It’s possible she will suffer another stroke which will kill her, depriving her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, husband, sisters and brothers of her love and companionship. Or she may contract pneumonia or influenza in the nursing home which may also kill her.

When she was life flighted to Mother Frances in Tyler, the doctors were astonished that she had been released from a hospital a week earlier for heart problems and not given blood thinner medication. “Just aspirin?”

When I saw her a few days after the stroke, she said, “they’ve killed me. Those doctors. That Dr. Saunders, that asshole, praying over me before the radiation. He’s a phony, he’s a jackass. I wish someone would put hookwires in his balls and radiate him. None of them ever cared about me as a person. They didn’t listen to me.”

I said, “Mama, why did you have the radiation?”

She said, “They intimidated me. They bullied me.”

I have never seen my mother intimidated in her life. She is a strong, opinionated, assertive person. My mother is usually the one doing the intimidating.

I did a little bit of research on treatment of DCIS. While radiation is standard protocol, I was interested to note that 75% of women who do NOT receive radiation after surgery do NOT have a recurrence of the cancer. My mother is 79 years old – how many extra years of life were you hoping to give her by aggressively treating a slow-moving, non-invasive precancerous condition?

By treating her with a therapy that I’m certain she told you she didn’t want?

I don’t know what you said to her to make her agree to radiation, but know this: she never wanted it. She didn’t need it. She didn’t deserve what you did to her. My mother has hardly been sick a day in her life – she was active, intelligent, interested in the world around her, and tried to take good care of herself. I fully believe that her condition now is a result of your bullying, lack of concern, and carelessness in your medical treatment of her. At the very least you need to personally and sincerely apologize to her. Not that she will accept it or forgive you, but you still need to offer it. Groveling is encouraged.

My mother told me she regretted ever getting a mammogram, ever listening to what you doctors had to say. She regretted the biopsy, which she said was like medieval torture, she regretted the surgery, more brutality, and most of all she regretted having the radiation. “Don’t you ever do it,” she told me and my sister. “We won’t, Mama,” we said. “You’ll regret it if you do,” she said.

“I already regret it, Mama,” I said, looking at her sorry state.

With all the media attention on breast cancer and mammograms, pushing, pushing, pushing women to get mammograms...this experience with my mother makes me wonder how much the medical profession genuinely cares about women. It seems our breasts have become one of Big Medicine’s great cash cows. You can bet that my sister and I will be telling every woman we know about this horrific and tragic experience.

Here are my mother’s instructions to you and your staffs:

· Treat people humanely

· Listen to your patients

· Respond appropriately to what people say (not, “oh, you’ll be fine, the side effects will go away, don’t worry about it.....”)

· Show some sincere concern

· Practice good medicine, as opposed to “this is the way we always do it (& we get paid so much more when we do it this way)”

· OR GET OUT OF THE HEALTH CARE FIELD

We are also including an attractive sign for you to hang on your office wall where you can see it every day. Sorry we couldn’t afford a frame, we have to save our money for our mother’s nursing care.

Sincerely,

Brenda G. McDonald

The sign said simply: First, do no harm.