Thread by @jencurran

Been getting chemo for 4 months now and I need to reiterate how disgusted I am seeing first hand the privilege and unlimited resources you need to treat a deadly illness in America. Short thread:

You can’t really have a job unless it’s odd hours or super flexible because treatments take so long and happen during the workday, which is an insane oversight when you need a full time job to pay for the treatments. Almost everyone in my chemo ward is white & upper middle class.

There are no childcare options, you just have to handle it privately, even though MANY cancer patients have small kids. I even went to a diff doc’s office, a kind of gyno, where they don’t use chemo, and they told me “we’d prefer if you didn’t bring your baby, it’s inconvenient.”

A minor annoyance, but parking is astronomical at every medical building I go to. So are the in-building cafes.

The costs associated with the whole thing are just absurd and it’s helping literally no single person to battle that stress. And I don’t know maths but I’m gonna bet Mr. Health Insurance CEO wouldn’t be a penny poorer if we made this stuff affordable for real people.

This America tells you: if you have a disease that can kill you, and you need medicine, you’d better have big money coming from somewhere! Gonna get EXPENSIVE! Hope you have a rich grandma! Hope you sent her Christmas cards! Hope you aren’t afraid of words like bankruptcy!

Your community can and will help you. And that is amazing and humbling and so beautifully human.

But how sad that communities have to break their backs to save each other because, at the exact same time, corporations are stealing from the pockets of the dying.

✌️✌️

The end.

Been sharing my Chemo Day experiences over on my instastories if you wanna follow along. Most of it’s just fun silly stuff while I navigate this less fun reality instastories.com/msjencurran