Ghecemy Lopez of Los Angeles, a two-time cancer survivor who now has immune issues. She dons plenty of PPE for her doctor’s visits.
It’s pretty much been corona, corona, corona these last few months — even in Cancerland — and I don’t imagine that will change much moving forward.
States are starting to open up — Washington will get there eventually —and I pray everyone out there stays safe as we slowly creep forward with our masks and mad soap & water skillz and (hopefully) enough sense to stand far enough away from people that we don’t accidentally breathe in any virus particles they may be talking, sneezing, laughing, singing, coughing or farting our way.
Sadly, it looks like we’re going to be here a while. Yet another new normal.
Like everybody else, I’m hoping science can find or fast-track better treatments than remdesivir (the Tamiflu of COVID-19, just emergency approved by the FDA) and that other drug combo the orange guy in the White House keeps chatting up, along with sunlight and bleach, as a fabulous miracle cure.
Like everybody else, I’m praying a vaccine isn’t too far off in the distance. First time I typed that, I wrote vacuum, by the way, which may tell you where my head is.
I used to blame that sort of thing on chemo brain; now I think it’s more quarantine brain. It’s Tuesday, right? June 32?
As soon as we started hunkering down in early March and I saw how freaked out people were about the epidemic — all the uncertainty, the life or death odds, the extra precautions we all had to take to stay safe, the lack of a cure — it struck me as weirdly familiar. So I wrote about it for Fred Hutch News Service.
For those who’ve been diagnosed with cancer, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic has felt a little, well, familiar. The frantic Googling and data-gathering. The denial and disbelief. The uncertainty and panicky behavior. Cancer patients have been there.
Same goes for all the handwashing and hypervigilance. People who’ve been through surgery or radiation or chemotherapy or bone marrow transplants or other immunocompromising treatments are routinely forced to hunker down at home, avoiding crowds and friends with colds, skipping weddings and air travel and ordering their groceries online.
As one Seattle survivor put it, “I’ve sheltered in place lots of times.”
Did your cancer diagnosis and treatment ‘prep’ you for the COVID-19 pandemic? Certainly feels that way to me, same for the enforced quarantine after my ankle break last August.
Will the losses we’ve endured as cancer patients — family, friends, fellow advocates gone to another invisible enemy — help us bear the inevitable COVID-19 deaths ahead? It’s tough stuff, but as with cancer, we all have to somehow keep powering through.
But right now, it’s all feeling pretty old.
I’m getting corona-cranky after two months of hiding out at home. I’m angry about the people who’ve died and who keep dying because of our country’s clown car response to a deadly pandemic. I’m getting homesick (ironically) for restaurants and yoga studios and my old boring cubicle at work.
So I’m going back to peruse a few of these lessons from cancer patients in the time of coronavirus. Feel free to join me. Or send along your own. I’m having way too many arguments with my cat (and the little snot keeps winning).
#StayHomeStayAlive
#JustKeepSwimming
#FUcancer #FUcovid19
Double Whammied 