It was surreal to go from being a relatively healthy middle-aged woman one day to being someone who is battling with a serious health condition the next. It was even more surreal to get a phone call from my doctor telling me that I have cancer.
90% of cancer is simply bad luck. 10% is genetic predisposition. I’m in the 90%. Statistically, I’m not even supposed to have this. Yet here I am. It was so unlikely that it hadn’t occurred to my doctor to suspect it, until he saw the pathology report.
By the time you’re my age, your identity is usually the sum of your life experience. Something you’ve accumulated, something you’ve built. And then there are identities that are thrust upon you. Being a cancer patient is one of them.
Finding yourself having to battle cancer in the midst of a global pandemic, is something else.
The surgery is a month away. It’s a slow-growing cancer and well differentiated, but at the same time, no one can tell me how long I’ve had it. Lymph nodes have to be analyzed to see if it has metastasized. Only post-surgery pathology analysis can tell us.
So, the future is almost completely unknown. It’s unknown exactly how much of future I get to have. Almost all my plan had to be scratched. My heart breaks at the thought of possibly leaving my loved ones behind and alone. My octogenarian parents never thought they could be left behind by their adult child at this point.
If I were to ask my friends of anything, I would ask this: Do whatever you can to stay healthy. In the middle of a pandemic, it means to wear a mask diligently, to wash your hands frequently, and to physically stay away from people of other households. In normal times, it means to try to have healthy habits and to get your routine checkups with your health care providers.
Especially women - our bodies tend to be quirky. But don’t dismiss things you notice. Talk to your doctor. Get it checked out.
Never skip cancer screenings as recommended.
I’m fortunate enough to have a platinum policy and an access to good quality care and expert providers. I am angry that someone like me would have to consider going deeply into debt in order to access the lifesaving care they need, or that they may not even have an access to it. I’m infuriated at the thought of non-medical people, especially men, deciding whether or not I could get the care I need to stay reasonably pain-free and alive. I’m livid at the thought of running out of the insurance coverage simply because it already cost x amount of money, all to protect the bottom line of an insurance company.
It burns my soul to hear people speak of those with preexisting conditions as if we are sacrificial. If I get Covid now, my chance of survival for the next 5 years is smaller than that with simply having the cancer. I still have to go out - to the hospitals, to the pharmacy, to a grocery store. I can’t live in a plastic bubble.
In my days of looking directly at my own mortality, if you thought I’d stop being political, you never knew me.
Politics affect life. They affect lives including mine. If you say you care about me but support the policies that hurt me or people like me, you actually don’t.
Wear your mask. Wash your hands. Don’t get together with others. Never skip checkups.
Vote.
