According to Businessweek in 2008, 39-year-old hedge fund consultant Dee Dee Ricks had enough disposable income to drop $400,000 at a charity auction just to sing on stage with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. Ricks lived in a $14 million apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her two young sons, and says she couldn’t spend the money she was making fast enough.
“I also just found out I have cancer,” she says at the start of “The Education of Dee Dee Ricks,” a moving HBO documentary that chronicles her battle with Stage II breast cancer and growing indignation over inequities in the nation’s health-care system.
Ricks began videotaping herself so her boys would have something to remember her by, and she’s fearless in revealing the most intimate details of her struggles. Before undergoing a double mastectomy, she bears her breasts for the camera, commenting ruefully, “For years I hated them and wanted to change them. Wow, this is it.”
A month after surgery, the bills begin to arrive. Because her operation lasted longer than the time-limit covered by her insurance policy, Ricks owes $26,000 out of pocket. She can pay it, but wonders about those who can’t. Visiting the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention in Harlem, a cash-strapped clinic offering free medical care to uninsured women with breast cancer, Ricks vows to raise $2.5 million. …
Read more at http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-24/hedge-fund-whiz-shaken-by-breast-cancer-rosie-talks-nice-tv.html
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