Indian Water Rights Give Hope for Better Health
More than a hundred years ago, the Gila River, siphoned off by farmers upstream, all but dried up here in the parched flats south of Phoenix, plunging an Indian community that had depended on it for centuries of farming into starvation and poverty.
LIZETTE IRVIN, HEAVILY PREGNANT, reclined on a hospital bed, relaxed, considering the circumstances. A bag of fluid dripped into her blood through an IV line as Irvin sucked on ice cubes, trying to pass the time. The ice helped to minimize the metallic taste and heat in her mouth from 5-fluorouracil, an antimetabolite, which entered her bloodstream via a catheter inserted in her chest. It was June 16, Irvin’s fourth round of chemotherapy. She was 32 weeks pregnant and had breast cancer.