Defending Andy: One Mother's Fight to Save Her Son from Cancer and the Insurance Industry

In this deeply affecting memoir, Azevedo, a registered nurse and speaker for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, details the years her son spent battling cancer. Andy, the youngest of five children the Azevedos raised on their dairy farm in California, was an outgoing high school student. He loved his friends, his girlfriend, the outdoors and playing football; he anticipated a bright future. In 1988, after an injured finger refused to heal, he was diagnosed with clear cell sarcoma. He remained courageous through it all, but after three years of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, he died. In solemn prose imbued with the alternating clarity and disbelief of grieving, Azevedo traces Andy's struggles to remain upbeat through the highs and lows of treatment. She describes moments of his life that she holds dear, recalls his smile, a childhood tantrum, his best friend's death. She also addresses the lacks of the current system of health insurance: a recommended bone marrow transplant for Andy was not approved by his insurer. (Azevedo's community raised the money, but the transplant never took place, because the cancer had spread too fast.) Azevedo tells how, together, she and Andy traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for health insurance reform, influencing President Clinton's decision to sign a partial reform bill into law. Azevedo is particularly articulate in delineating the abuses of an HMO system that denies treatments that physicians have recommended because they are too expensive. Any parent going through a similar crisis, and any reader concerned about the failures of America's health insurance system, will be greatly moved by the author's memorial to her son. B&w photos. (Mar.)