National Nurses United

RAD:1 10/17/07 9:56 PM Page 29 "I wasn't alone anymore. I was with people who knew what I was going through. I felt like we had a purpose and what we were doing was right." A LIFE DENIED (continued from page 21) The board would not budge. Pierce said she stormed out of the room that day, convinced that the board would have decided differently if it weren't for elitism and racism against Tracy, a black man. They briefly entertained the idea of paying for the transplant surgery out of their own pocket, but Kansas University Medical Center needed $250,000 up front to even consider it. That kind of money was out of their reach. According to Pierce, when Tracy's cancer spread to his brain, he did receive radiation for seven days but by then, everything was too little, too late. When Tracy went into the hospital after Christmas 2005, Dr. Van told Pierce there was nothing else they could do and that they should prepare for Tracy's death within three weeks. "Then I'm taking him home," Pierce remembered saying. The insurance company did approve hospice care, and for the next couple of weeks, Pierce's sole mission was to stay with Tracy in their bedroom and make sure he felt as little pain as possible. Even that was a challenge. On Jan. 12, they submitted a request for morphine lozenges, since Tracy couldn't swallow very well and the idea was that he could suck on them. The approval finally came six days later. But Tracy couldn't take them because he died that day, Jan. 18. OCTOBER 2007 "They kept telling us that he was going to die," said Pierce. "But I didn't really do anything to get ready. That was like admitting he was going to die." After her husband's death, Pierce went into deep shock and basically secluded herself in the house for almost a year. She reduced her work hours to the bare minimum to—What else?—keep health insurance for herself and Little Tracy. In March 2006, Jim Flink, the Channel 9 news reporter who had followed their case from the beginning, called to say that the filmmaker Michael Moore was interested in speaking to her for a documentary he was making on the health insurance industry. She agreed, and the film crew came out to Kansas and spent the whole day taping. After they left, she said they would call about once a month to check in with her, but for the next year, she and her son were alone with their grief. She didn't leave the house except for work and to visit Tracy's grave at the cemetery. She didn't answer the phone. She'd come home and go to the bedroom and just lie there. Little Tracy would retreat into his bedroom and play video games. What finally pushed Pierce and her son out of their self-imposed isolation was the release of Moore's movie, SiCKO. They flew to New York City for the premiere, testified before Congress, and met other people who had been treated badly by the health insurW W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G ance industry. Pierce found new inspiration and strength to fight as a healthcare advocate. "I wasn't alone anymore," she said. "I was with people who knew what I was going through. I felt like we had a purpose and what we were doing was right." Pierce started living again. She still works at her hospital job, but also travels around the country to speak about her husband's struggle to get medical care. Another SiCKO patient, Donna Smith, started a group called American Patients for Universal Health Care, and Pierce sits as vice chair. She said she even started driving the pearl white Cadillac de Ville that she insisted Tracy splurge on when he realized he couldn't work anymore. For more than a year after Tracy died, she had made payments on the car, but couldn't bear to drive it. Besides fighting for the health of all Americans, Pierce is still fighting for those she loves dearest. Little Tracy has a 50-50 chance that he carries the gene that caused his father's illness, so Pierce would like to get him tested. When her son was just a child, he actually had kidney stones and required an MRI and ultrasound of his kidneys. Doctors had asked his parents at the time whether the boy had any family history of kidney disease, and they had replied no. But given Tracy's cancer, Pierce worries about her son's future. "I would like to know," she said. Not surprisingly, the two-part test is not covered by Pierce's insurance, and she couldn't afford to pay for the $1,000 fee out of her own pocket. Fortunately, when Pierce attended the 2007 CNA/NNOC House of Delegates in September, nurses one night collected more than $6000 in donations for Little Tracy to get tested. "I was so overwhelmed that in one hour, a roomful of women and men who don't know me would give that much money to get my son tested," said Pierce. A week after the conference, she had already contacted Johns Hopkins in Maryland to fill out the paperwork to set up the test. Pierce is also looking into finding an attorney to represent Tracy's case in the hopes of holding someone with the hospital or insurance company accountable. "They killed my husband," she said. "I promised him that I would not let this go." I Lucia Hwang is editor of Registered Nurse. REGISTERED NURSE 29

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