Sometimes,
logic dictates that the best course of action to treat a serious illness
is to go to prison. Here's an amazing story of how one man committed a
crime in order to get the medical care he desperately needed:
A 41-year-old man who had been incarcerated came to see me recently.
While in prison he got in a fight, which led to a CT scan. He hadn't
broken anything, but the scan did surreptitiously show two aneurysms.
Both were in his hepatic artery (the artery that feeds his liver).
They were small, so the doctors kept an eye on the aneurysms without
doing surgery. But the next time they checked, they had nearly doubled
in size.
He was referred to a surgeon at a different hospital than the one I
work at, and underwent an angiogram, to see the aneurysms better. The
surgeons there said that he was sure to die if they did not intervene,
and that they should schedule a surgery within the coming weeks.
Fortunately for him (or so he thought) he was released from prison
one week later. When he returned for his pre-op visit, though, he was
told that since he'd been released from prison, he no longer had insurance
to cover the operation. [...]
... not knowing what else to to, it occurred to him that the easiest
way to get the care he needed would be to get back in prison.
The next week, he went to a department store and, making sure a security
guard saw him, pocketed some moisturizing cream. He looked up at the
guard, smiled, and walked out.
After he was arrested, he wrote a note to the judge saying that he
needed to get back into prison for a year, to get an operation. He told
me the judge said "I'll give you 14 months, go get your surgery."
Doctor Joshua Mezrich told the story over at
The Atlantic.
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