Profile: Lashundra Bryson

Pulling staples out of someone's skull would seem absurd to anyone with insurance.

by Brian Burke

Lashundra Bryson got a good grip on the metal staple lodged in her boyfriend's head, and started pulling. This is usually a job for a nurse with years of training, so, armed with a $20 pair for forceps, she tried to ignore what could go wrong.

"They needed to come out," she explains. "At a certain point, you just have to talk yourself into doing it."

The boyfriend, who didn't want his name used, had fractured his skull in a skateboarding accident about two years ago in California, but didn't have health insurance. When he was discharged from the hospital, the nurse � knowing how costly a return visit would be � gave him forceps so someone else could do the job.

While pulling staples out of someone's skull would seem absurd to anyone with insurance, both Bryson and her boyfriend are the prototypical case of young professionals whose jobs don't offer health care. (Bryson, 27, is a temporary administrative assistant earning $9 an hour at Triad Strategies, a lobbying firm in Philadelphia; they moved here in March so her boyfriend could be closer to his family.) As a result, Bryson has become familiar with the world of free health care, particularly how to self-diagnose and perform the occasional staple-removal.

Bryson graduated as an English major at the College of William & Mary before enrolling at the Los Angeles Film School. A career in theater didn't pan out, and she's struggled to find stable employment. The only time she has been insured in the past four years was from July 2006 to March of this year.

"I went to the doctor all the time," she said of those months. Besides seeing a physician, she was able to get treatment from a chiropractor for neck and back problems that had cropped up. But those days are gone.

When Bryson developed a "quarter-size dark patch" of skin on her face last month, she had to decide whether to just hope for the best or spend money out of pocket to get it checked out. She played it safe and looked in the phone book for a dermatologist, choosing one that was open one day a week; since it lacked a Web site, Bryson figured it would be the cheapest. Thirty-five dollars later, the doctor peeled off some dead skin around the patch only to find out that it was healing underneath.

"Better safe than sorry," she says.

Sometimes, however, the only opinions Bryson gets are those of her friends and co-workers. When she contracted a mystery illness in California, she exchanged medicines with a co-worker who had similar symptoms. People told her she had everything from kidney stones to gall bladder problems, and she held off on seeing a doctor because of the cost. "I thought, 'I can just wait it out until I get insurance,'" she recalls. (It turned out she had acid reflux.)

Nowadays, Bryson suffers from asthma and sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night having trouble breathing. She can't get a prescription, so she has tried to improve the ventilation in her Mount Airy apartment by running the air conditioner. She also tries to avoid physical activity that causes her to lose her breath. When Bryson needs treatment, she visits the Fairmount Primary Care Center on Fairmount Avenue near Broad Street. Run by Delaware Valley Community Health Inc., the center offers outpatient services to the uninsured. She's pleased with the treatment she has received there and said the facilities were clean. Yet, it lacks many comforts: Bryson misses having only one doctor and is uneasy with the phenomenon of working alongside people who enjoy health benefits unavailable to her.

"It used to make me sad. It makes you feel like you're not equal," she says. "There are people a lot worse off than I am that don't have insurance. [Universal health care] should just exist."

Today, Bryson is still searching for a permanent job that could offer her those long-needed benefits. But in the meantime, she's holding on to both her $20 forceps and the hope that nothing goes wrong.