A Black lady filed a lawsuit this week alleging that well being care suppliers contracted by the Mississippi jail the place she was incarcerated for many years withheld her most cancers analysis and left her to endure in ache for years.
Susie Balfour, 62, is suing a number of well being care corporations and dozens of physicians and nurses for violating her constitutional rights and denying her well timed and correct medical care, leaving the most cancers that developed in her breasts undiagnosed for years till simply earlier than her launch.
Balfour was serving time behind bars on the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) for 33 years. For a minimum of 10 years throughout her sentence, the go well with alleges healthcare suppliers named within the go well with “failed to acknowledge or outright ignored the presence of suspicious lots” in her breasts, although Balfour complained of ache, tenderness, and lumps.
She had rare mammogram appointments between 2011 and 2021 wherein docs famous in a number of experiences over time that the calcifications forming in her breasts had been “rising,” however “benign” or “in all probability benign.” Nonetheless, based on Balfour’s attorneys, some docs’ billing information point out docs had been offering companies associated to “malignant neoplasm in breast,” suggesting they might have already detected most cancers.
It wasn’t till November 2021 that Balfour obtained a biopsy, which revealed most cancers cells. She wasn’t notified till “mere days earlier than her launch” in December 2021 that she had breast most cancers, based on the criticism.
After her launch, Balfour went to a different physician and underwent extra exams which confirmed she had Stage 4 breast most cancers that unfold to her lymph nodes, bones, and liver.
The go well with maintains that the defendants “allowed her most cancers to progress from Stage I, which was treatable, to Stage IV, which is spreading all through her physique and untreatable.”
“Defendants responded to Ms. Balfour’s severe medical situation with deliberate indifference. Defendants callously disregarded the indicators that Ms. Balfour was affected by a severe medical situation,” the go well with states. “Defendants didn’t order beneficial diagnostic testing or refer Ms. Balfour to an out of doors specialist. Defendants constantly delayed Ms. Balfour’s analysis and remedy and didn’t deal with Ms. Balfour’s signs regardless of her worsening situation. Throughout every of those delays, Ms. Balfour’s most cancers continued to unfold, and her prognosis worsened.”
Due to the defendants’ “deliberate indifference,” the go well with states that “surgical intervention, similar to a mastectomy, is solely not an possibility” and that Balfour’s situation is now “untreatable and terminal.”
“I need to maintain them accountable for what they’ve completed to me,” Balfour instructed The Guardian. “Being alone in there, I feared I used to be going to die, as a result of I’ve seen so many others dying from not with the ability to get the right care they wanted.”
The go well with states that in Balfour’s incarceration, she and different prisoners had been required to wash the jail “with chemical compounds identified to trigger, or to contribute to inflicting, breast and different cancers with none protecting gear.” The go well with purports that a minimum of 15 different incarcerated people at CMCF “have most cancers and are usually not receiving obligatory, life-saving remedy.”
The go well with seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
A spokesperson for the Mississippi Division of Corrections instructed the Mississippi Free Press that the company doesn’t touch upon lively litigation. The outlet additionally reached out to the three healthcare corporations named within the go well with who haven’t returned a remark.
