The Mississippi prison has, amongst all its forgetful stories, a painful tale to tell. The story of Ms Balfour, who is currently battling breast cancer, has left no words to speak regarding her situation.
The story gets more atrocious when it is to be known that she was not provided adequate treatment for her breast cancer despite her repeated complaints.
Susie Balfour, 62, claims that medical personnel at the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) knew she might have cancer as early as May 2018, but they delayed doing a biopsy until November 2021, a month before her release from custody.
According to her federal complaint, a University of Mississippi Medical Center physician did not identify her as having stage four breast cancer until January 2022, after she had left an MDOC facility.
Following the same, she has filed a lawsuit that tells a lot about the prison facilities in Mississippi. The care and concern of the prisoners seem to be of least interest to the prison facilities.
She goes on to add, “I feel betrayed by our system that failed to provide timely medical care for me. I feel hopeless, I feel angry, I feel bitterness. I feel shock and disbelief of this going on with me at a time when I’m getting ready to get out (of prison),” said in an interview Tuesday. ”It is too much to take in that this is happening to me.”
The lawsuit claims that despite the fact that prison doctors had advised Balfour to have follow-up cancer screenings, the businesses that were hired to provide medical care to inmates at the facility—Wexford Health Sources, Centurion Health, and VitalCore—delayed or neglected to arrange them.
She has added that she, along with her other prison mates, was made to clean the prison area, which had chemicals that can cause cancer to people. One of the attorneys also goes on to say that “Balfour’s cancer may have been detectable over a decade ago.
After she was released in 2021, an outpatient doctor performed a mammogram that showed she had stage four breast cancer, which was mentioned in the suit.
The dismal situation in this case is truly alarming as the prisoners, at the end of the day, are citizens too. This is just not a case acceptable to humanity.
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