The tragic story of a girl who did not get regular PAPs

I was asked by my church Relief Society to take a meal to someone last night. As a former Relief Society President, myself, I knew this girl from working with her two years ago.

Amanda (not her real name) is in her early 30’s, mentally ill, destitute, and (thankfully) the state finally took her children away. We continue to love her and care for her the best we can.

Amanda has been living in a filthy motel room for the last few months. I didn’t have time to cook so I stopped at a deli counter and picked up a couple of salads that had meat, nuts, and broccoli in them. I didn’t know her health problem, at the time, but had been told she was ill, so I also picked up a week’s worth of microwavable macaroni cartons so she could have a hot lunch all week. I’m glad I picked broccoli, she told me it was her favorite.

But I was horrified by her story!

Just a few days earlier, a huge mass inside her “private area” started bleeding and half of it fell out into the toilet. This dear woman from the church took her to the emergency room, where it was discovered that she had a grapefruit-sized mass on her cervix and had lost 22% of her blood. She was admitted so the hospital could do blood transfusions and then released the next day.

She very matter-of-factly told me that she had been told it was most likely cervical cancer in a very advanced state. She had called her grandmother, who had come to the hospital, and she could tell from the look on her grandmother’s face that this was very, very, very serious.  Update:  It’s a Stage 2B Cancer, possibly Stage 3.  They’ll treat it with chemotherapy and radiation, no surgery.  It appears to be spreading and they are afraid surgery will make it spread even more. 

The hospital she was in did not want to continue to treat her. *Emergency rooms have to handle life-threatening emergencies, even for the uninsured. This is a state teaching hospital; of all hospitals, THEY should have done more for this girl. But they discharged her without a biopsy and without ensuring that her mass would not continue to bleed, and suggested she go to another hospital or clinic for diagnosis and treatment.

Don’t get me started on this one. As a women’s minister who was in the hospital three times a week with people who were uninsured, I had already learned to avoid this hospital. They turned away a woman who had a watermelon-sized fibroid in her uterus that was black and purulent and causing terrible pain because it wasn’t immediately life-threatening. Oh, would I love to change the American healthcare system.

*Note: I am drafting an email to an investigative news reporter to see if they want to look into how many seriously ill, uninsured patients this hospital turns away.

As I think about and as I’ve spoken with some medical-savvy friends on it, we are SO ANGRY at that hospital. This girl could bleed out over the weekend! That tumor could continue to fall off. Anything could happen, for crying out loud, she clearly has a cervical cancer and they were not following through.

So this girl and her grandmother got her some new id with the grandmother’s address on it so she could be seen by a different hospital, only that hospital only takes people who live in their county. THAT hospital was incredible, they dealt with this thing right away. God bless this grandmother for taking this option!

A biopsy has been scheduled for tomorrow morning. My guess is, a surgery will be scheduled very shortly.

I’m not fond of ob-gyn exams and PAP smears but as an employed, educated woman, I get them and know their importance. A little scan of the Internet confirmed what I had seen, that women in poverty do NOT get PAP smears and THEY are the ones dying.

Cervical cancer is one of the cancers that can be detected early and, therefore, has a great survival rate. But you have to get a regular PAP.

Amanda was one of the first girls I got to know when I was Relief Society President four years ago. Within my first few weeks in this role, she had found a tiny kitten in the middle of a busy street near her apartment. She rescued it and called me. You have to love someone who cares so much about animals.

It breaks my heart to know what her future holds. I can see that she has lost a great deal of weight. That cancer has likely spread.  She is not on any government assistance that I know of and lives on the weekly rent of a cheap motel room in a rough part of town.  Her family is quite distant and has never known what to do with her.  We, her sisters in the church, are already planning to go scrub her motel room and try to find her a better place to live, and we will be in touch with a social worker at the hospital to move her to the “top of the list” for housing and other aid.

I am afraid that she will not live out the year, and all because she was poor and did not get a PAP.

Dear, dear readers, please know that almost every community has programs for the poor to get free or low-cost PAP smears. But each person needs a personal friend, an advocate, who will take them under their wing and gently shepherd them through making and keeping the appointment.

My commitment, today, is that I will be in touch with family members and those I love and serve in my community and church and help them get a free PAP smear. I cannot bear to learn of another case like Amanda’s.