Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 04:12:56 -0800 (PST)

From: Pam Young <pyoung1955@yahoo.com>

To: delphine1939@videotron.ca ,

I had a TRAM flap done while on the table after my mastectomy due to inflammatory breast cancer.

About a week later my abdomen was so infected that I was put into a hospital where I went into a coma for 6 weeks, had 32 units of blood, a heart attack, kidney failure, etc., and when I awoke from the coma I couldn't use my legs or right arm.

I was in the hospital for almost 3 months, including the several days in acute rehab to relearn to walk and move my arm.

My bill came to $1.1 million; our insurance lifetime cap is $1 million, so even after the bargaining down of the bill to roughly $800,000, we only have about $50,000 left (after subtracting the benefits we'd already used).

I'm likely going to die within a short time, and we can't even sue the s.o.b. who told me to have the TRAM flap, even though I did not want one.

He said there wasn't enough skin to close and that he "didn't like the results" from skin graft closings after mastectomy, so talked me into the TRAM flap. He later, along with the dozen-plus doctors on my case in ICU, harvested all the skin off both my thighs to close the "biggest open wound they'd ever seen" on my abdomen, resulting from the infection.

I would tell every woman who is offered this abomination of an operation NOT to get it!

This will be looked back upon as a medieval-level of torture not too long in the future.

-- Cynthia