A Black woman filed a lawsuit this week alleging that health care providers contracted by the Mississippi prison where she was incarcerated for decades withheld her cancer diagnosis and left her to suffer in pain for years.
Susie Balfour, 62, is suing multiple health care companies and dozens of physicians and nurses for violating her constitutional rights and denying her timely and proper medical care, leaving the cancer that developed in her breasts undiagnosed for years until just before her release.
Balfour was serving time behind bars at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) for 33 years. For at least 10 years during her sentence, the suit alleges healthcare providers named in the suit “failed to recognize or outright ignored the presence of suspicious masses” in her breasts, even though Balfour complained of pain, tenderness, and lumps.
She had infrequent mammogram appointments between 2011 and 2021 in which doctors noted in multiple reports over the years that the calcifications forming in her breasts were “increasing,” but “benign” or “probably benign.” However, according to Balfour’s attorneys, some doctors’ billing records indicate doctors were providing services related to “malignant neoplasm in breast,” suggesting they may have already detected cancer.
It wasn’t until November 2021 that Balfour received a biopsy, which revealed cancer cells. She wasn’t notified until “mere days before her release” in December 2021 that she had breast cancer, according to the complaint.
After her release, Balfour went to another doctor and underwent more exams which confirmed she had Stage 4 breast cancer that spread to her lymph nodes, bones, and liver.
The suit maintains that the defendants “allowed her cancer to progress from Stage I, which was treatable, to Stage IV, which is spreading throughout her body and untreatable.”
“Defendants responded to Ms. Balfour’s serious medical condition with deliberate indifference. Defendants callously disregarded the signs that Ms. Balfour was suffering from a serious medical condition,” the suit states. “Defendants failed to order recommended diagnostic testing or refer Ms. Balfour to an outside specialist. Defendants consistently delayed Ms. Balfour’s diagnosis and treatment and failed to treat Ms. Balfour’s symptoms despite her worsening condition. During each of these delays, Ms. Balfour’s cancer continued to spread, and her prognosis worsened.”
Because of the defendants’ “deliberate indifference,” the suit states that “surgical intervention, such as a mastectomy, is simply not an option” and that Balfour’s condition is now “untreatable and terminal.”
“I want to hold them accountable for what they’ve done to me,” Balfour told The Guardian. “Being alone in there, I feared I was going to die, because I’ve seen so many others dying from not being able to get the proper care they needed.”
The suit states that during Balfour’s incarceration, she and other prisoners were required to clean the prison “with chemicals known to cause, or to contribute to causing, breast and other cancers without any protective equipment.” The suit purports that at least 15 other incarcerated individuals at CMCF “have cancer and are not receiving necessary, life-saving treatment.”
The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
A spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Corrections told the Mississippi Free Press that the agency doesn’t comment on active litigation. The outlet also reached out to the three healthcare companies named in the suit who haven’t returned a comment.
