Ginsburg’s Supreme Views on Cancer Sessions

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has some advice for those coping with cancer: classical music for radiation sessions, sound-blocking earphones for intensive care stays and backbone for dealing with bill collectors.

She shared her experiences as a colorectal cancer patient at a dinner for the foundation of the Washington Hospital Center, where she was treated in 1999 and 2000.

Ginsburg said she was shaken this year when lawyers hired by the hospital began pursuing her for bills that were to have been settled by her insurance company.

“It is now over two years since my surgery. I feel well, and I remain hopeful that WHC’s repeated billing errors . . . will one day be cleared,” Ginsburg said at the Wednesday night affair.

The attorneys who went after her backed off, “rescinded, I am happy to report,” after the insurance company interceded, she said.

Ginsburg, 68, one of the wealthiest members of the Supreme Court and the wife of a cancer survivor, was an appeals court judge for 13 years before her 1993 appointment to the bench by President Clinton.

In her talk, Ginsburg had some complaints about accommodations for her treatment and suggestions of how to improve conditions for other patients.

She said the radiation equipment “tolerated radio stations blaring hard rock music and worse but interfered with classical music station reception.”

“A tape or CD player in the room could aid lovers of Brahms, or Haydn and Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, at small cost. Beautiful music, I think you will agree, can temper anxiety,” she said.

In intensive care, “the decibel level was not conducive to sleep,” the justice said. As a fix, she recommended sound-blocking earphones be offered to patients.

Ginsburg, who praised the hospital’s staff, has put up in her chambers a certificate from four technicians who tended to her during six weeks of radiation.

“On Feb. 29, 2000, Justice Ginsburg graduated from the Washington Hospital Center Department of Strange Events and even Stranger People. Let all who read this know that we could not dampen the spirit nor stifle the sense of humor no matter how hard we tried--and boy did we try. We graduate you with respect and love,” the certificate reads.

Ginsburg said, “It is my graduation certificate from the hardest course I have ever taken.”