#preexisting

Explained: Could pre-existing antibodies help protect some people against COVID-19?

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Written by Mehr Gill , Edited by Explained Desk | Updated: November 7, 2020 7:59:31 pm

A health worker takes a nasal swab sample to test for COVID-19 in Hyderabad. (AP)

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and the University College London have found that some antibodies that are created by the immune system…

90% of cancer is simply bad luck. 10% is genetic predisposition. I’m in the 90%. Statistically, I’m not even supposed to have this. Yet here I am. It was so unlikely that it hadn’t occurred to my doctor to suspect it, until he saw the pathology report.

By the time you’re my age, your identity is usually the sum of your life experience. Something you’ve accumulated, something you’ve built. And then there are identities that are thrust upon you. Being a cancer patient is one of them.

Finding yourself having to battle cancer in the midst of a global pandemic, is something else.

The surgery is a month away. It’s a slow-growing cancer and well differentiated, but at the same time, no one can tell me how long I’ve had it. Lymph nodes have to be analyzed to see if it has metastasized. Only post-surgery pathology analysis can tell us.

So, the future is almost completely unknown. It’s unknown exactly how much of future I get to have. Almost all my plan had to be scratched. My heart breaks at the thought of possibly leaving my loved ones behind and alone. My octogenarian parents never thought they could be left behind by their adult child at this point.

If I were to ask my friends of anything, I would ask this: Do whatever you can to stay healthy. In the middle of a pandemic, it means to wear a mask diligently, to wash your hands frequently, and to physically stay away from people of other households. In normal times, it means to try to have healthy habits and to get your routine checkups with your health care providers.

Especially women - our bodies tend to be quirky. But don’t dismiss things you notice. Talk to your doctor. Get it checked out.

Never skip cancer screenings as recommended.

I’m fortunate enough to have a platinum policy and an access to good quality care and expert providers. I am angry that someone like me would have to consider going deeply into debt in order to access the lifesaving care they need, or that they may not even have an access to it. I’m infuriated at the thought of non-medical people, especially men, deciding whether or not I could get the care I need to stay reasonably pain-free and alive. I’m livid at the thought of running out of the insurance coverage simply because it already cost x amount of money, all to protect the bottom line of an insurance company.

It burns my soul to hear people speak of those with preexisting conditions as if we are sacrificial. If I get Covid now, my chance of survival for the next 5 years is smaller than that with simply having the cancer. I still have to go out - to the hospitals, to the pharmacy, to a grocery store. I can’t live in a plastic bubble.

In my days of looking directly at my own mortality, if you thought I’d stop being political, you never knew me.

Politics affect life. They affect lives including mine. If you say you care about me but support the policies that hurt me or people like me, you actually don’t.

Wear your mask. Wash your hands. Don’t get together with others. Never skip checkups.

CNN’s Sanjay Gupta on How Covid-19 Affects People with Underlying Conditions

Sanjay Gupta on Covid-19 and people with underlying conditions

Follow this link to view a video of CNN’s Sanjay Gupta explaining how Covid-19 affects people with underlying conditions more severely than the rest of the population. This is particularly worrisome if you are a male over 65 with a preexisting condition such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, or other maladies. These account for…

Trump’s plan for people with preexisting conditions is thoughts and (most likely not) prayers

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Here’s what Trump’s attorneys wrote: “Once the individual mandate and the guaranteed- issue and community-rating provisions are invalidated, the remainder of the ACA should not be allowed to remain in effect.” The assured challenge and group score talked about there are the issues that be sure you can get medical health insurance no matter preexisting conditions, and that insurance…

Trump says he will sign an executive order to cover pre-existing conditions 2020

President Donald Trump said he would work on an executive order in the next two weeks to oblige health insurers to insure those with pre-existing conditions.

This requirement – that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions – is already required by law and has existed since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in 2010.

Trump has tried to repeal or undermine…