Elizabeth S. Cohen - The Empowered Patient: How to Get the Right Diagnosis, Buy the Cheapest Drugs, Beat Your Insurance Company, and Get the Best Medical Care Every Time

PRAISE FOR
THE EMPOWERED PATIENT

Sharing her own personal struggles, CNNs Elizabeth Cohen gives keen insights on how you and your family can get excellent medical care from your doctor.

Deepak Chopra, author of Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul

After generations of our treating health-care providers and doctors like gods, never questioning them and feeling complacent, Cohens book is a wonderful shot in the arm. Its for all of us who want to approach medicine like consumers, to ask questions, and to know our rights. The Empowered Patient gives patients the valuable tools to advocate for themselves and their loved ones.

Lee Woodruff, author of Perfectly Imperfect and co-author with Bob Woodruff of In an Instant

Just as our health-care system becomes more complex and each of us scrambles to find our place in the labyrinth, there is help. In The Empowered Patient, Elizabeth Cohen offers guidance for getting the most from your doctor, insurance company, and even your medicine. She outlines things you need to know when you are well, so that you have the voice and the power to access the system intelligently as a patient. This book will hold your hand, make you smart, and may even save your life.

Nancy L. Snyderman, MD, NBC News chief medical editor and author of Diet Myths That Keep Us Fat

My colleague and friend Elizabeth Cohen has written a book no household should be without. With a no-nonsense approach to medicine, she will teach you how to do right by your bodies and your health care. One thing we all share in common is the likelihood that one day we will be a patient, and your best bet is to be an empowered patient. Let Elizabeth Cohen show you how.

Sanjay Gupta, MD, chief medical correspondent for the Health, Medical and Wellness unit at CNN and author of Cheating Death

The minute I picked up The Empowered Patient, I knew this was a must-read book for everyone. Elizabeth Cohen reveals insider knowledge about the uncertainty of medicinethings every doctor knowsand then helps you steer a clear path to health!

Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Womens Bodies, Womens Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause

Whether youre seeking a second opinion, surfing the Internet for medical information, challenging doctors or nurses when treatments dont make sense, or confronting insurance denials or high pharmaceutical costs, CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohens provocative and saucy handbook is a gift. Her advice could be life-saving.

Bernadine Healy, MD, health editor and columnist, U.S. News & World Report

Its not often one can say that reading a book will save your life. But Elizabeth Cohens The Empowered Patient has the capacity to do just that. Its succinct, to the point, well organized, and packed with essential information for anyone facing hospital admission, meeting with a physician, or simply filling a prescription.

Evan Handler, actor (Sex and the City, Californication), author of Time on Fire and Its Only Temporary, and long-term survivor of acute myeloid leukemia

Elizabeth Cohen will teach you how to be your own best advocate for your health and your life. Elizabeth knows medicine inside-out as both an expert and as someone who almost died due to medical neglect. She has seen the best and the worst that medicine has to offer and will passionately guide you to empower yourself to get superior care for you or a loved one and save money at the same time.

Clark Howard, author of Get Clark Smart

To Tal, who keeps his five gals healthy,
with all my heart

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F our days after giving birth, amped up on a combination of hormones and anxiety, I gathered together what was left of my stomach muscles and wrenched myself out of bed. Throwing on a bathrobe, I dragged myself to the neonatal intensive-care unit.

Id been there before. Shir was our third daughter who had been in the NICU, and even at six-thirty in the morning, even in my postpartum fog, I knew the way through the winding corridors and up the elevator. From the looks of the men in the hallway, I probably had a breast or two hanging out of my robe, but I didnt care. Thats how oblivious new mothers are to anything except their newborns. This holds especially true when that newborn is in intensive care, attached to IVs loaded with three antibiotics, two antiviral medications, and a monster dose of barbiturates.

When Shir was two days old, as I held her in my arms, she had a series of seizures that turned part of her face blue. The nurse whisked her upstairs from the maternity ward to the NICU, where neonatologists immediately put her on barbiturates, a standard treatment for seizures. Ever since, shed been in a barbiturate-induced deep, deep sleep. She looked as if she were in a coma. For the next day and a half, we waited for a team of neurologists, cardiologists, hematologists, and infectious-disease experts to figure out the cause of her seizures. They feared it could be an infection, and so along with daily blood tests and urine tests shed had a spinal tap every day, where doctors stuck a needle into her tiny spinal column to retrieve fluid. Not only is this procedure painful for the baby, it carries with it risks, such as infection, where the needle is inserted.

Finally, the night before my early-morning trip to the NICU, my husband and I received good news. The doctors had determined that the seizures were a fluke and werent likely to happen again. They told us they would immediately stop the daily spinal taps, take her completely off the antibiotics and antivirals, and cut back on the massive doses of barbiturates that had made Shir so sleepy. In the morning wed see a different baby, the doctors promised us, one who didnt have so many needles and was much more awake.

Relieved, my husband went home at midnight to be with our two older girls. On my early-morning jaunt to the NICU, I was filled with the hope of seeing my baby awake for the first time in two days.

Thats not what I found.

When I arrived at the NICU that morning, Shir was the same rag doll Id seen the night before; they hadnt decreased the barbiturates at all, and they hadnt taken her off the other medications. I asked the nurse on duty what was going on. Surely shed received the doctors orders the night before to stop the drugs and the spinal taps?

There were no orders last night, she told me, checking the chart. Everythings the same. They just gave her a spinal tap an hour ago.

What? They were supposed to stop the spinal taps immediatelyour doctor had told us that for sure.

There was more. That spinal tap they just gave her didnt work, the nurse told me. They got the needle into her spine, and they tried but couldnt get any fluid out because shes dehydrated. Theyll try again in an hour.

I couldnt believe what I was hearing. Not only had my baby had one unnecessary spinal tap; she was about to have another. I had to stop them.

Call the doctor, I urged. Hell tell you: shes not supposed to have any more spinal taps.

But the nurse refused. She repeated that Shir would have another spinal tap in an hour. No matter how much I argued, she was adamant.