In the summer of 2020, at the start of the pandemic, my life changed. A 40-year-old Abitibi resident, living in Val-d’Or, I received a heavy blow: colorectal cancer, stage 4, metastatic to the lungs. The watchwords: QUICK and URGENT! It had to roll to save me. The game plan planned and spread over two years: radiotherapy, chemotherapy, operations. So I rolled up my sleeves, moved on, and faced the biggest challenge of my life.
Posted yesterday at 3:00 p.m.
Good news, bad news, hope, worries, discouragement, willpower, side effects, pain, fears… different steps to follow and several trips to Gatineau and Montreal. Through all these upheavals, exceptional people. Considerate and meticulous doctors, professional and attentive nurses, reassuring and attentive technicians, understanding and available pharmacists, experienced and human surgeons and empathetic and helpful office workers.
A marathon that brings me to today: five radio treatments, ten chemo treatments and five operations. I meticulously followed my file, I asked a lot of questions and I respected the recommendations of each specialist.
And I braved it all in the middle of a pandemic. I had the chance that some have not had. So, the word is weak to say how much I have a lot of empathy for all the tragic stories that I have seen in the various media related to the load shedding caused by COVID-19.
Sick people who could not be cured and who had to live in fear and anguish. Canceled operations, delayed treatments causing preventable deaths. A virus that has exposed the shortcomings of a health system that was not doing so well, even before its arrival.
I dare to hope that all these situations will have challenged government authorities enough for a revolution to take place. May rapid changes and improvements build a solid foundation to prevent a future situation (pandemic or other) from jeopardizing the care offered to the population. But also to provide a healthy and safe work environment for all employees working in the health sector.
I am extremely grateful and filled with gratitude that my story is a beautiful one. By telling you a bit of it, I wanted to give you hope. But I also want to encourage positive thinking about this very complex and very expensive system which certainly deserves to be improved, but which normally offers access to care for our entire population. To the rich, to the poor, to newcomers, etc.
As patients, we are treated with money from our taxes and from various foundations, regardless of the costs incurred for an illness (treatments, intervention, hospitalization, etc.) or an injury (accidental, work , etc.). It’s one less hassle to arrive at the hospital and be taken care of without having to claim insurance or without having to go into debt.
Let us be grateful to have access to this system which supports us, regardless of our social status. Let us value all the health professionals who care for us and who work in a difficult environment.
Let’s hope that the current government and future ones will protect and give love to this system in order to ensure quality care at all times, regardless of the social context in which we live. We hope that better working conditions will be offered and will give all its employees the desire to stay in the industry.
Since March 2020, there have not only been tragedies in the health sector, I am proof of that. I can finally say that I am in remission! I’m going to have very tight follow-ups for a while, but the more time that passes without reappearance, the better the chances of moving towards a full recovery.
I thank life, my entourage, science, the health professionals that I have and that I will continue to meet: the DD St-Amant, the Dr Séguin, the Dr Tabchi, the Dr Bossé, the Dr Liberman, the D.r Chelfi, the D.r McLaughlin, the D.r Pelletier and all their teams of nurses, pharmacists, technicians, anesthesiologists, respiratory therapists. All office workers, storekeepers, housekeeping employees, security guards and so on. All these people make it possible to operate this system which succeeds, every day, in saving lives!