Being diagnosed with cancer is devastating, especially if you aren’t prepared. The cancer treatment process is painful, expensive, and debilitating. If you’re not ready, it will turn your life upside down and can afflict you, both emotionally and financially.
This can happen to you, your loved ones, or anyone. How will you survive at times like these? A cancer survivor shares her story.
Candice, a wife, and mother of two children, was your typical supermom who struggled to find balance between work-life and family. She often found herself caught up in a whirlwind of work and household responsibilities, running from one activity to another. When she has some spare time, she spends it with her family shopping, dining out at their favorite restaurants, and taking short vacations during school breaks.
Unfortunately, in February 2019 (the week after the Chinese New Year Celebration), she began coughing up blood. Her family took her to a nearby polyclinic, but they were told to go directly to the hospital. There, they discovered that she had stage-four Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer.
The discovery of her illness was one of the hardest things she had ever had to face. She had to quit her job and entrust her husband to manage the family’s finances for the treatment. She also stopped breastfeeding her baby because of certain medications. It was mentally and physically draining for her. It felt like she was a burden, and she didn’t know how sick she would be or whether she would survive this.
And what’s more, their bills were piling. They had to pay for both her medical expenses and her family’s needs.She knew how young her kids were and she wanted to make sure that their happiness wasn’t disrupted. Her primary concern was to make sure her daughters were well-provided for in the event of her untimely demise.
The most challenging part of her cancer battles was the treatment. She had to undergo 12 chemotherapy sessions for six to seven months—at the cost of $10,000 per session—and four PET scans for $2,500 each, totaling $130,000. In addition, they also have to pay for the radiotherapy treatment, which amounted to $20,000. And that’s not all, she still had pretreatment blood tests, hospital stays, and other miscellaneous costs, but all of which were covered by her health insurance.
Despite the ill-fate she had, she was very thankful for life insurance. They have been able to afford most of the same things they had when she was not yet critically ill. Their younger daughter still went to the same Montessori school her older sister attended.
Moreover, being able to focus on her health without having to worry about paying for expensive treatment freed her from carrying overwhelming financial liabilities. Much more than that, she was able to do things she hadn’t done before, like spending more time with her children—which she valued above anything else.
Cancer has certainly changed her views in life. She believed that if she could only turn back time, she’d just do one thing: get more insurance. And now that she’s on the mend, she realizes how fortunate she is to have had the financial security to cover her medical expenses as well as maintain the quality of life for herself and her family.