Tag / 2020

by Jacqueline Chartier

What 2020 Has Taught Me

This year’s global pandemic has taught me many valuable lessons, some of them I had previously learned by being a cancer patient but had almost forgotten. Ironically, I’ve found that cancer and a pandemic have much in common in terms of the emotional and psychological impact that they have on an individual. The world order has been shaken by this once in a century global crisis and I doubt that we will ever go back to the exact same existence that we knew before. People will divide their lives into before and after the pandemic like I now divide mine into before and after cancer. An article in the British newspaper The Guardian compared the COVID-19 pandemic to a magnifying glass, noting that it has illuminated deprivation, inequalities and political unrest, while reminding us of the power and beauty of nature and humanity.

Here are some of the issues that the pandemic has shed a light on for me:

We are surrounded by a materialistic and competitive culture. 

As I was forced to spend more time at home or in solitude due the pandemic restrictions, I was reminded of what is essential or important. Too many of us can’t imagine life without frequent trips to shopping malls and beauty salons, if we’re younger we don’t know what to do when our weekend isn’t spent going to night clubs and parties. Meanwhile, the pandemic has allowed some of us to regain focus on what really matters, things like our relationships, our sense of self, perhaps in the end our definitive contributions to this world.

The gap between Canada’s richest and poorest continues to widen. 

“There’s a convenient fiction perpetuated that Canada hasn’t experienced the great extreme inequalities of wealth at the top end that the United States has,” a report from Canadians for Tax Fairness said. “It’s true that our wealthiest don’t have fortunes at the same level as Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett, but the number of Canadian billionaires has increased at a far faster rate than the number of American billionaires and their total wealth has also increased at a much faster rate.” The pandemic hasn’t stopped the wealthiest from growing their fortunes. The report found Canada’s 44 wealthiest people, all billionaires, grew their wealth by a total of $53 billion between April and October of 2020. 

The sick, elderly and disabled continue to be marginalized.

Figures compiled by the Canadian Institute for Health Information uncover the devastation of the pandemic on our most elderly and vulnerable citizens. During the first wave of the pandemic, more than 80 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in the country occurred in long-term care homes and retirement homes. During the second wave, seniors in nursing homes and residents of institutions once again bore the brunt of the pandemic. This was despite vows from federal and provincial governments to make improvements, changes aimed at preventing the second wave from ravaging long-term care facilities. Tragically the pandemic has revealed the systemic failures in how the world’s most developed countries choose to respond to aging, disability and the need for end of life care. 

The lowest paid people in the country are essential to its functioning.

As COVID-19 has invaded the country’s communities, there are many Canadians who cannot — must not — stay home and avoid it. Among them are the recognizable and well-paid heroes, the doctors, nurses and paramedics. These essential workers always have to be there in national or local emergencies, and they have risen to the call time and again. But in 2020, Canada’s essential workforce expanded its ranks. It now includes people who never expected to be on the front lines of a crisis, workers whose jobs have been traditionally invisible or undervalued. These truck drivers, grocery store clerks, cleaners, personal support workers and municipal workers had little time to prepare themselves for their newly dangerous roles. They entered the pandemic without masks, face shields or plexiglass barriers. Along with those in health care, they’ve had to learn on the job how to protect themselves from the virus. A lot of them have gotten sick. And yet, they show up day after day.

Science and medicine are the greatest wonders of our time.

I’m alive because of medical science and what it’s capable of in the fight against cancer, during the search for a COVID-19 vaccine my sense of wonder was renewed. Never before in human history have vaccines for a pathogen entered final stage clinical trials and received approval for distribution to the public so rapidly. Just one year ago, when the death toll from the coronavirus stood at one and neither it nor the disease it caused had a name, a team of Chinese scientists uploaded its genetic sequence to a public site. That kicked off the record-breaking rush to develop vaccines. It’s difficult to associate anything to do with this pandemic with good fortune, but the fact that the culprit was a coronavirus — one that was strikingly similar to others that had previously leapt from animals to people — meant scientists could quickly rejigger vaccine projects in the works for those. It was almost like swapping a blue Lego for a red one in their assemblies.

by Jacqueline Chartier

My Decade in Review

In anticipation of a new decade, I find myself performing a quick scan of traditional and online media, not surprisingly I discover an inundation of both year end and decade end reviews. Many would agree that the events of the past decade have been turbulent, sometimes even frightening. There’s some level of apprehension when we consider our planet and our civilization. In the past decade millions of people around the globe have been forced to flee from war, extreme poverty or the rise of radical factions and dictatorships. Science has presented irrefutable evidence that the world’s climate is in crisis and that fossil fuels and other human factors are mostly responsible. Meanwhile, technology, in the form of social media and smartphones, has forever altered the way we work and interact with one another. 

For me, as an ovarian cancer survivor, the decade 2010-2019 had its own special events—complete with moments of revelation. Here I’ve created a summary of what I consider to be the most significant occurrences, both for myself and for the entire ovarian cancer community.

2010: Fear and Denial

As the decade began I was experiencing vague symptoms of ovarian cancer, however I remained largely unaware of how serious my situation was. When I look back now, I wasn’t listening to my own body as much as I should have been, I tried to ignore the whisper until it became a scream. Initially, I didn’t pursue my emerging health issues aggressively or communicate openly with my doctors. I expect it was fear and denial combined with ignorance. 

2011: The Journey Begins

In 2011 an abdominal ultrasound revealed several abnormalities, including a mass on my right ovary—just as ominous was the fact that some of my symptoms (abdominal pain, lack of appetite, frequent urination) were becoming more severe. I foolishly tried to protest at first, but I ultimately consented to a complete hysterectomy as well as the removal of my right ovary. On November 3, 2011, I received the results of my surgical pathology report. As I went over the report with my gynecologist, it was the first time in my life that I had words almost literally spin before my eyes. 

  • Adenocarcinoma of the endometrium
  • The uterine cavity is completely filled with light tan neoplasm.
  • Right ovary with synchronous endometrioid adenocarcinoma

2012: The Fight of My Life

Finding out you have cancer, I can personally attest, is a unique kind of fear, but I believe this feeling is heightened even more for women who learn that they have ovarian cancer. It’s among the most feared and deadly cancers, one that tends to inhabit our worst nightmares of the disease. Someone once said that you never know how strong you are or how brave you can be until you encounter a crisis and have no choice. In terms of serious illnesses, I had inhabited a world of almost complete innocence, hospitalization, surgery and chemotherapy were all terrifying firsts for me. But eventually, Calgary’s Tom Baker Cancer Centre, being a patient on the gynecologic oncology unit and regular cycles of Carboplatin with Taxol became part of my routine—they would become agonizingly familiar to me as I fought for my life. 

2013-2014: Picking Up the Pieces

My oncologists informed me that I was in remission and there was no evidence of cancer on any of my latest scans, however my journey was far from over. I would be required to have checkups twice a year at the cancer centre as they monitored my closely. If I didn’t experience a recurrence within five years, their plan was to ultimately discharge me back into the care of my family physician. Meanwhile, I tried pick up the pieces of my life as I came to terms with my new identity as a cancer survivor. In the fall of 2013, I participated in a major Canada-wide event the Ovarian Cancer Canada Walk of Hope. I felt less alone as I walked with hundreds of other advocates and mingled with other survivors.

Posing with my mom and brother Ray at the 2013 Ovarian Cancer Canada Walk of Hope.

2015-2016: The Emperor of All Maladies

This was the period when I started to think a great deal about the history of cancer, especially the many patients that had come before me and the pioneering oncologists who set the stage for today’s advanced treatments. I developed a fascination with these topics while watching the PBS miniseries Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies. The creators of this ground-breaking television documentary based their project on a Pulitzer Prize winning work of nonfiction by renowned oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee. Both the PBS documentary and Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize winning volume have one overriding theme. They bring to light that our current generation’s experience with cancer represents only a momentary chapter in an epic battle spanning thousands of years.

2017: At Long Last

On my many visits to Calgary’s Tom Baker Cancer Centre, I was alarmed by the obviously overcrowded quarters. After my first couple of appointments, I found it impossible not to notice how filled to capacity the building is. I was subjected to the overflowing parking lot, the busy chemotherapy beds and the standing room only waiting areas. Finally, in the fall of 2017 ground was officially broken for the new Calgary Cancer Centre. The new facility is scheduled to open in 2023 and will have double the capacity to treat patients with state-of-the-art technology. As 2017 ended, I received the news that I had only dreamed of for so long. My oncologists were satisfied that after five years without a recurrence I no longer needed to see them, they told me my health could be managed once again by my family physician.

An artist’s depiction of the new Calgary Cancer Centre.

2018-2019: A Way Forward

I don’t know when or if my cancer will recur, but I’ve learned to accept that terrible uncertainty. All I can do is live in the moment and make the best of what I have now, I’ve become aware of how fortunate I am as I’ve watched so many other women struggle with incurable ovarian cancer or eventually succumb to this cruel and vicious disease. It was a major triumph for the Canadian ovarian cancer community in 2019 when the federal budget allocated 10 million dollars to ovarian cancer research.

That year I cheered on the efforts of Ovarian Cancer Canada as they relentlessly lobbied the federal government to invest the much needed 10 million. Numerous meetings with survivors on Parliament Hill finally helped persuade some key politicians that better funding is needed to save thousands of lives. “Today, the Government of Canada has taken steps to invest in needed research which will translate into scientific progress against this disease. This announcement makes an important commitment to women’s health and equity in health care – and it is a milestone made possible because of you,” wrote Ovarian Cancer Canada CEO, Elisabeth Baugh.