vaccines | The Teal Diaries: An Ovarian Cancer Journey

It’s around lunchtime on a windy spring day as I walk into the building and begin navigating the checkpoints that have been set up for the COVID vaccination clinic. As I make my way to the old gymnasium in the former children’s hospital, I’m relieved that I’ve managed to book an appointment—after several months of waiting it’s finally my demographic’s chance. Like hundreds of thousands, I had to first wait in anticipation while following the latest updates from the Alberta government concerning a complex vaccine rollout plan.

I’m intensely aware as I’m about to be vaccinated, that our province has one of North America’s highest COVID-19 rates. Of course, it’s a dubious distinction and our third wave outbreak has garnered international attention in the media. In recent weeks American. television networks including CNN have covered the crisis and so has the venerable British newspaper The Guardian. As a cancer survivor and someone who is potentially vulnerable to complications from the virus, I’ve become extremely angry and frustrated.

Many physicians and leading public health experts have argued that it didn’t have to become this bad and that Albertans shouldn’t have to go through this nightmare. The third wave has been terrifying, especially for those of us who are not young or perfectly healthy, On the day that I’m ready to receive my first dose of Pfizer vaccine, Alberta has around 570 active cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents, more than twice the Canadian average. It’s the highest rate recorded anywhere in Canada at any point during the pandemic.

Regrettably, the province is now mired in its third major round of restrictions since the pandemic began last March. The latest surge has forced the reintroduction of strict, sweeping public health measures, closing all schools provincewide and temporarily shuttering many non-essential businesses. Most experts are citing a variety of contributing factors to explain exactly how we got into this situation or why Alberta’s third wave has become so severe. Here is their general consensus of what went wrong:

A premature easing of public health restrictions
An underestimation of COVID-19 variants
An inequitable vaccine rollout
Non-compliance and non-enforcement regarding health restrictions
Refusing to prioritize the province’s schools and teachers

For the time being, I’ve joined a steady stream of hopeful Calgarians at the vaccination centre. There is light at the end of the tunnel I tell myself as I enter the gym and a woman takes my registration confirmation number and asks for my ID. Suddenly, I’m not just thinking about myself or my immediate geographic region, but the entire world. I wonder how many people will also get vaccinated today—both in Canada and around the globe. I believe in science and I understand mass vaccination will be one of the keys to ending this unprecedented pandemic that has claimed millions of lives.

Naturally there are segments of the population that are hesitant or sceptical about the new COVID-19 vaccines and are unsure if they should be immunized. History reveals that vaccine scepticism is as old as vaccines themselves. Increased resistance to compulsory smallpox vaccination during the 1870s and 1880s exposed the fragility of trust in both the political and medical establishment. The most radical opponents to vaccines used demonstrations and publishing to rally their cause. The situation is similar today, many doctors and infectious disease experts acknowledge that their work has been made more challenging due to the anti-vaccine movement.

As I meet the diligent young nurse who is about to administer my injection, I know I trust both her and the medical and scientific community. Perhaps it’s my experience as a cancer survivor that allows that trust to come more easily. Sometimes I marvel that 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. To me this doesn’t mean they cut corners or that proper clinical trials weren’t conducted— it’s only a testament to what the scientific community can accomplish when it works together toward one crucial goal.

Following my shot, I get up and move to the waiting area full of masked and freshly immunized patients. As a routine precaution people are asked to wait for at least fifteen minutes after their injection before leaving the vaccination centre. As I sit in my socially distanced chair, I think to myself that I will probably remember this moment for the rest of my life. Someone said that the stories you hold on to about the pandemic will be coloured by your own experience—but also by the experiences of those around you. In a way we’re already shaping our future pandemic narratives—the stories we will tell as individuals, as communities, as societies, and as nations about this epoch.

Sometimes I marvel that 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 over a 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.

In December 2020, Health Canada authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Soon there was more encouraging news when they officially authorized a second vaccine for the virus, an injection manufactured by Moderna. The first Canadians to be offered the country’s limited inventory of the vaccines were those considered to be most vulnerable, the staff and residents of nursing homes and long-term care homes were prioritized. The frontline doctors and nurses who have been risking their own lives during this pandemic were also given appointments to receive their immunizations against COVID-19. I watched, as some of the health care workers receiving the vaccine shed tears of joy and relief. Many proudly posted photographs of themselves getting vaccinated on social media, reassuring the public and preparing us all for when it would eventually be our turn.

Making sure that patients receive clear and accurate information is essential and everyone has a role to play. Ultimately preventing misinformation is a shared responsibility. The flow of medical knowledge works best when researchers, journalists and the public are strongly connected and considerate of one another. Nineteenth-century doctors tried to maintain boundaries between scientific journalism and the media, but were unable to prevent the public and journalistic demand for health information. That desire remains with us today. But even working together, the solution isn’t simple, experts maintain that changing behaviour in vaccine hesitant patients, isn’t always as easy as correcting misinformation. There’s still an emotional gap and trust gap that physicians regularly need to bridge in order to elicit this behavioural change.

Like all informed people, I accept the scientific conclusion that if you have active cancer, you’re at a higher risk for more serious outcomes if you acquire COVID-19. Cancer is considered an underlying medical condition. It’s a scientific fact that many cancer treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, can weaken your immune system, making it harder for you to fight the virus. Initial clinical trials on COVID-19 vaccines did not include people with cancer or those receiving treatments that can suppress the immune system. However, many professional organizations are endorsing the vaccines’ safety and efficacy for this group. Since individuals living with cancer are at increased risk of serious illness resulting from COVID-19, there is growing consensus among health authorities and oncologists that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks. Some exceptions include people who are severely immunocompromised or who have certain severe allergies .The National Cancer Institute emphasizes that people, including those with underlying medical conditions such as cancer, may get vaccinated if they have no history of severe allergic reaction (e.g., anaphylaxis) to any component of the vaccine.

As a final point, cancer patients going through active treatment are definitely at higher risk for COVID-19 complications, but what about cancer survivors or those whose cancer is in remission, such as myself? Little data is available to date on how the virus affects cancer survivors, but some early research suggests that we might also be at a higher risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes. One UK study found that the majority of comorbidities thought to be associated with poor COVID-19 outcomes were more common in the cancer survivors than the cancer-free controls. In general, cancer survivors had significantly higher rates of diabetes, asthma, and other respiratory disease, as well as more chronic heart, liver, and renal disease, and neurologic conditions, than controls. Nine years after my cancer diagnosis I appear fortunate to have few of these lasting health complications. Still I’ve made up my mind, after considering the research and the scientific facts, that I will be getting vaccinated as soon as I’m given the opportunity.

The Teal Diaries: An Ovarian Cancer Journey

by Jacqueline Chartier

Tag / vaccines

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