Cancer during Covid: What comes next?
Image credit: Carry Chalk
Sidelined at a strange time in the world…
Usually we’re delighted with the changes that come as spring arrives—longer sunnier days, gardens blooming, a chance to get outside more often. And I was doing just that—biking, prepping our sailboat to go in the water soon, walking, lap swimming. But in May of 2020 things went a bit sideways for me and not just because of the sudden awareness of a pandemic in our society. More than that, I became a member of a club I never wanted to join when I was suddenly diagnosed with ALL, acute lymphoblastic lymphoma. Cancer. This was becoming a strange year to begin with already, but this news certainly added a twist.
How I discovered the issue is that a mass had taken up residence inside my chest making it difficult for me to breathe. This had been getting worse for a couple of weeks and I chalked it up to weight gain and needing to be more active. But the last straw was the morning I tried to change the bed and had to rest a few times—my husband then forced me to call the doctors office and get an appointment immediately.
Assuming this was just a muscle spasm or some minor virus, the surprise of their discovery cannot be underestimated. I’ve always been pretty healthy, strong, and had clean health checks. The tip off should have been when the lab technician at the doctor’s office insisted on giving me a disc of the images, saying I’d need to have it with me.
I made my way back to my car, laboring like a much older person trying to catch my breath. While I sat there wondering what was going on, my cell phone rang and the physician’s assistant asked if I was still there, could I come back in the building. I told her that was probably not possible, and at that point she asked if there was someone who could drive me to the emergency room — to go there immediately. They had detected a mass in my chest pressing on my chest wall and my right lung was filled with fluid.
It’s one of those moments that stops you cold, your brain tries to process what’s happening as if you’re listening to someone asking for your help with a problem. As it happens, my husband was just down the road finishing work on the boat and got to me quickly. He deposited me at the entrance of the ER at RI Hospital, I told him I’d call shortly and let him know what was going on. Little did I know, it would be almost a month before I would see him in person again.
And then I stepped into an odyssey I never expected—one involving medicine, healthcare, self discovery, and the involvement in my life of some pretty amazing people.
There are many ways you could respond to this outcome, but let’s just say I remember my first night in the hospital, being awake in the early hours, and thinking, “Ok, this is what we’ve got and this is what we know so far. Now how do we deal with it and what comes next?” Add to this fact that we were living during one of the worst healthcare scenarios of my lifetime—a Covid virus pandemic—and what that meant to the process of being cared for when you have cancer which just increased the complexity for all of us—the doctors included.
Needless to say, once this news really sinks in and you begin to realize what is ahead in terms of time, medicine, and treatments, it becomes apparent that the rest of the world isn’t going to matter for awhile. And you need to step away from things that seemed important and demanding and change gears in a fundamental way.
So that’s the start of my story, but it’s not the end.
There have been so many discoveries—some are medical, some are personal insights— but most are tied to the amazing care I’ve been given, and the gratitude that comes from realizing how much other people are willing to give of themselves for your well being. You can never underestimate humanity and our ability to give and receive love and care, even from people we don’t know. I’ve found new friends, held dear those that I had, and reinforced the intense love I have of my husband and family. It’s an ongoing process, and its not over. There are things yet to be learned and it’s my hope to connect with others who may need that same support and learning in order to navigate their own path ahead.
fierce /firs/
adjective
“showing a heartfelt and powerful intensity”
