National Nurses United

I s a 52-year-old woman any less deserving of a mammogram than a 49-year-old woman? And if that 52-year-old woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, is she any less deserving of treatment than at age 65? These are the kinds of questions that Maurelle Wyeth has asked herself over the past six years because, you see, she was that 52-year-old woman. Wyeth, now 58, like nearly 51 million other uninsured Americans, has lived most of her life without health insurance coverage. At various times in her life, depending on the job she held, Wyeth enjoyed health insurance and was able to go to the doctor when she needed to, to get her cholesterol checked out, or to get an old cavity filling replaced. It���s hard for her recall now, but she thinks that in her 20s and 30s, she had coverage here and there when she worked in publication production at a variety of magazines and publishing houses. But she definitely remembers the early 2000s with fondness, for that was when she and her husband, Al, were able to access regular healthcare through her job at the Mail Tribune newspaper in Medford, a small community on the southern edge of Oregon where they live. ���It was wonderful,��� said Wyeth. ���We got everything taken care of that we needed to. We got tests done. We got our teeth done. I hadn���t been to a dentist in 10 years and the teeth were starting to fall out of my head.��� After she left her job at the paper, the Wyeths continued to pay for COBRA coverage, but just couldn���t keep up with the nearly $600 per month payments. So they had to drop the plan in 2003. Her next job was as an in-home caregiver for an elderly woman named Shirley, a job that paid no benefits like health insurance. Around that time, Wyeth looked into purchasing insurance on their own. ���We would have loved to have had health coverage,��� she said. ���We were both getting older and starting to worry. But the cost was just beyond our reach.��� She estimates that the most she ever made in one year was about $24,000 when she worked at the newspaper. A college graduate who originally earned her bachelor���s degree in art history, Wyeth says that she has worked hard all her life, but the types of jobs she was able to get just didn���t provide healthcare or wealth. As a young woman, she also struggled with depression, which affected her ability to build stability or a career. ���I didn���t choose poverty,��� she said. ���I would have loved to have health insurance all along the way.��� Today, she and her husband get by on a combination of loans, gifts from family, and food stamps, and they earn their rent by acting as caretakers for the property where they live. In 2006, while she was still taking care of Shirley, Wyeth decided to go back to college at Southern Oregon University and study Spanish, a longtime dream of hers. She was a model student, earning all A���s her first quarter. As is always the case with such stories, things would have been fine if nobody had gotten sick. But that���s not how life works. On Nov. 28, Wyeth was in the shower when she found a sizeable lump in her right breast. It was large enough to create a big divet in her skin. The last time she had a mammogram was three years before, when she was still covered by her Mail Tribune health insurance, but she had 12 N AT I O N A L N U R S E not had her annual checkups since for lack of money. Wyeth panicked. ���I thought, ���Holy shit!��� I was really scared. Our godson���s mother had died of inflammatory breast cancer and I thought, ���I have inflammatory breast cancer,������ said Wyeth. A few weeks before, she had gone to see the school nurse and mentioned that, at age 52, she hadn���t had a mammogram in three years. The nurse had recommended that she go to the county clinic for a free mammogram funded by a prominent breastcancer foundation. Once she found the lump, Wyeth made an appointment right away. After a screening and biopsy, the bad news came back: Yes, Wyeth definitely had breast cancer. The lump was near the end of stage 2 and quite large, about 5 cm. ���I was terrified,��� said Wyeth. At that point, Wyeth luckily got connected to the right resources. As a low-income woman with breast cancer, she qualified for treatment under the Oregon Health Plan, which is that state���s version of Medicaid. Starting January 2007, Wyeth went through four rounds of chemotherapy to shrink and kill the cancer. Then in early May, surgeons removed the remaining mass. In June, she began six weeks of radiation. After that, she began an anti-cancer medication regimen. Wyeth responded well to all the therapies. Everything looked great. She had faced death and told him to get lost. She returned to school, studied Spanish furiously, and graduated in June 2011. This pro���le is part of our Tell Us Where It Hurts project, a collection of stories we are using to win Medicare for all, a tax on Wall Street, and an economy that bene���ts working people. Do you have a story to share? Go to www.nationalnursesunited.org/story. W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G MARCH 2012

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