The Bureaucracy of Care

By Coco Picard

Coco Picard is the author of the novel, The Healing Circle, which tells the story of a mother who abandons her family in California to pursue a miracle cure in Munich. Once she gets there however, she wonders if she might have already died. Bedridden with a terminal diagnosis, memories, nurses, immoral doctors, foreign television broadcasts, and phone calls from children intrude upon her consciousness. An aloe plant called Madame Blavatsky is her primary companion.

Below, Coco shares a comic on women’s health, healing crystals, and her mom’s battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Citations:

• Pre-Existing Condition Prevalence Among Women Under Age 65, KFF
• Yes, you can negotiate your medical bills. Here’s how to lower your costs, CNBC
• Tips and Tricks for Negotiating With a Hospital Billing Department, Nasdaq
• How to get rid of medical debt — or avoid it in the first place, NPR
• Differences between Male and Female Consumers of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in a National US Population: A Secondary Analysis of 2012 NIHS Data, Hindawi

Grab a copy of The Healing Circle and support an independent bookstore while doing so here.