A breast cancer patient and the ‘horrifying’ financial burden she’s facing

globalnews.ca:

When Lise Lalonde found out she had advanced stage two breast cancer that had already spread to her lymph nodes last July, her life came to a standstill so she could undergo a rigorous but debilitating treatment plan.

Three weeks later, Lalonde began to face physically and emotionally demanding rounds of chemotherapy for hours at a time. Her cancer was so aggressive that her medical team opted for a powerful chemo drug referred to as the “red devil” among patients, she explained.

“It was daily pain and suffering,” Lalonde said. “And the injections were, oh my God, a hundred times worse.”

The 51-year-old woman from Beauharnois, Que., then received injections directly into her bone marrow to boost her white blood cell count, before another round of what she described as “inhumane” chemo.

Lalonde was almost ready to throw in the towel nearly halfway into the plan because she was so sick, but what has made the situation even worse is the “horrifying” financial strain.

“You can go to bed wondering, ‘How long am I able to keep my apartment? How long am I going to be able to keep my car? How long am I going to be able to keep a roof over my head, put food in my fridge?'” she said.

With her diagnosis, Lalonde had to immediately stop working and she says her job unfortunately doesn’t offer any kind of benefits. She was entitled to a maximum of 26 weeks of Employment Insurance Sickness Benefit through the federal government, which gives her 55 per cent of her salary for six months.

But Lalonde is struggling to figure out what to do as the money runs out.

“I didn’t ask to have cancer,” she said.

Between the rounds of chemo, injections and her last surgery, Lalonde’s next appointment with her oncologist is not until the middle of