Law Schools

It’s Much Harder To Take Law School Finals After Finding Out You Have Cancer

Oh lord, this is awful. Take a look at today's tale of law school woe.

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Welcome back to Foreseeable Harm, a series where we take a look at some of the most appalling law school horror stories, straight from the law school trenches. These are real e-mails and messages we’ve received from real readers. Take a look at today’s tale of law school woe:

My first semester of 1L progressed in the normal course for the first couple months. Lots of Socratic method and making jokes about tortfeasors and gunners while having no clue what we were doing. However, it took a turn in October, when I began experiencing throbbing pain in my right… well, let’s say groin… The pain would come and go at first, but after about a week, it was nearly constant and made it painful to even walk.

I decided I needed to see a doctor, definitely a specialist. But to add insult to my literal injury, I discovered that the school’s insurance plan first required going to the student health center to get a referral to a specialist (ah, HMOs). NBD, except that the law school was not attached to the undergrad campus, or even in the same town. Lacking a car, it only took a bus, some light rail, and finally a mile walk to the health center. Definitely a fun time when it already hurts to walk the two blocks to class. Anyway, I went and got my referral to a urologist.

The doctor was great, except for the part where he said, “You may have cancer and we need to do exploratory surgery to do a biopsy.” A barrage of tests and pre-op work would inevitably follow, but the only availability for these appointments happened to coincide with my contracts classes. I immediately freaked out because the ABA attendance rule had just gone into effect requiring everyone to attend a certain percentage of classes and sign in to every one of them. I couldn’t afford to miss the number of classes required to get ready for the surgery. Not to mention, I was also hopped up on some serious medication to deal with my ongoing pain, making any class attendance more in body than in mind. But after talking to my contracts professor about my issue, he said not to worry and developed an unusual problem the rest of the semester of losing track of the sign-in sheets and forgetting to turn them in.

One problem solved. Except then the first surgery came in early November and the diagnosis was malignant. Bad news, now I needed a much more serious surgery, which would require hospitalization and six weeks recovery, and I needed it soon (plus they had already removed the cancerous organ during the exploratory surgery, so Lance Armstrong jokes a-plenty). Worse news, the Dean told me the school could not offer make-up exams. I suggested stacking my Spring courses in the full-time program with the second part of the year-long night program to essentially retake the second half of my first semester classes at night so I wouldn’t lose an entire year of law school. He was quite apologetic but said there was nothing he could do. I met with the Assistant Dean, who begrudgingly agreed with the Dean (though she was as livid as I was that there were no other options). It was take the tests on time with all my classmates or start over next year. Obviously, being young and stupid, I delayed the surgery and took the exams.

Two days after my last exam, I had the surgery. The good news was that the cancer had not spread and I was all-clear, no chemo required. The bad news (in addition to having just acquired a zipper from sternum to pelvis) was that, on my second day in the hospital, a hospital administrator came to my room and told my mother and me that I would have to be transferred to a group room for indigents adjacent to the emergency room and would then be discharged two days early. Apparently, the school’s health insurer was claiming (1) that my surgery was a possible pre-existing condition due to what they argued was a 68-day gap in my insurance coverage prior to law school (it was actually 61 days, something you had to keep track of in the pre-ACA wasteland) and (2) that my current bill had also exceeded my annual coverage limit for a single “event” since the surgeon brought in to perform the second surgery was considered out-of-network despite the pre-approval process identifying the surgeon. I was high on morphine and basically useless, but my mother did the best thing she could think of: she called the Dean. He was unavailable because of the holidays, but the Assistant Dean was in town. The details were hazy to me at the time, but I understand that the Assistant Dean drove to the hospital immediately after speaking with my mother and politely spoke to (read: fumed at) the hospital administrator, his supervisor, and finally the hospital superintendent about the planned transfer and discharge. Something about the situation being ridiculous and knowing a lot of good plaintiff’s lawyers and members of the hospital’s board of governors. Unsurprisingly, the administrator apologized to me for the “mix-up,” thanked the Assistant Dean for her “assistance”, and let me know I would be staying in my same room for the full in-patient period. Two weeks later, it was back to classes and smooth sailing for the rest of law school. Another month later, the insurance bill came, reversing the prior “provisional” finding and completely covering my ordeal. So yeah, happy ending I guess.

P.S. To top things off, I found out a couple years ago that one of my professors started telling new students worried about whether they could make it through 1L about the kid who had cancer his first semester, still made it through, and now works in Biglaw. Not sure if it’s a compliment, so I just assume it is.

What’s your law school horror story? You know you have one, so feel free to email us (subject line: “Law School Horror Story”) or text us (646-820-8477) and tell us all about it. We may feature some of them here in an upcoming post on Above the Law.

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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