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The Unique Devastation of Cancer in a Pandemic
During a pandemic, cancer is all the more terrifying, uncertain, and lonely
Emily Dolley had accumulated symptoms for months. Her fatigue felt unshakable, her throat often sore, and her voice increasingly scratchy. As Covid-19 peaked in Michigan, doctors dismissed Dolley’s concerns as allergies or a cold, and she was told she had to wait until summer for an ultrasound, and even longer for biopsies or blood work. By the time she got her diagnosis, the cancer had spread from her thyroid to her lymph nodes.
Because of the pandemic, Dolley couldn’t bring anyone along to the appointment where she got her diagnosis. When she began to cry at the news and wiped away her tears, the doctor instructed her not to touch her face. As she left the building, passing by Covid-19 screenings at its entrances, Dolley’s new reality set in. “Now I had to worry about people who could get me sick on top of cancer,” she recalls. “I had a total meltdown. I was scared. I was alone. I was absolutely furious.”
Though all she wants is her friends and family close by, Dolley will quarantine until her thyroidectomy, scheduled for mid-August. She doesn’t know yet whether her husband will be allowed to hold her hand before surgery, or if he’ll just drop her off at the door. By restricting her access to everything from testing to emotional support, she says, Covid-19 has made cancer especially scary and lonely. “At times I do feel that Covid is more important than me and my cancer. Covid is always first,” Dolley says. “It is just making a very difficult situation so much more difficult.”
Oncologists, too, say the high-stakes work of treating cancer has become even more precarious during the pandemic. Over the course of 2020, cancer specialists have struggled to understand how to protect their patients, whose immune systems are compromised by therapies like chemotherapy and radiation. “The burning question,” says Jeremy Warner, MD, MS, an oncologist at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Tennessee, “is can we treat our patients the same way now as we did before?” What’s worse: potential Covid-19 exposure, or delayed treatment?
“It’s like getting attacked from the inside and the outside. What’s…
