The call came in while I was at work.
Ahead of the phone ringing, I can remember trying to distract myself. I knew to expect it that week and so I spent the preceding days readying myself for any possibility. When it finally came, “ready” I was not.
I picked up, made a polite greeting and the voice on the other end of the line said to me, very calmly, “you have breast cancer.” It was the greatest shock of my life — or so I thought.
I decided early on not to tell many people about my diagnosis and treatment, just my immediate family, a few close friends and, of course, my employer. My treatment regimen would start with a double mastectomy, the recovery for which is intense. I let my boss know, upon being diagnosed, that I’d need time off to heal after surgery and build back my strength, envisioning nothing more than a few weeks off. It was important to me to maintain a sense of normalcy during my treatment — and what’s more normal than showing up to work?
At first my boss was empathetic, citing his connections to cancer and hoping for my swift recovery. But that changed very quickly and, days after being diagnosed and two months before I was set to undergo surgery, I was told to go home, rest and not focus on work. I was paid for the remainder of the week and not again. My boss assured me that this was for me, my health and only until I underwent and recovered from surgery. During the intervening two months between being sent home and undergoing surgery, I lived off the $100/week I received in disability insurance, having to dip into my savings several times to make ends meet.
My surgery came and went. It left me in a great deal of pain, but I also felt a sort of relief. It was over. My time to heal and build back stronger was here. I even began daydreaming about returning to work and that sense of normalcy when, two days post-op, I received an email from my boss. There was no more work for me there, he said. I was fired.
With the job went my health insurance, too. In the thick of my treatment, I was uninsured and had no money coming in. I felt completely adrift, betrayed and unsure where to turn. If not for the cushion provided by my savings and the opportunity to apply for financial assistance through my hospital, I don’t know how my family would have made it through.
This traumatic experience stands in stark contrast to when I had to take time off, several years before, to care for my son during his treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was working at a different company at the time that allowed me to take leave while maintaining a livable wage.
My two distinct experiences around taking leave — first as a caregiver and then as a patient — demonstrate that, if we leave it up to individual employers to ensure that their employees have access to paid leave, some will choose to slight the hardworking people who keep the company lights on. All that despite the reality that paid family and medical leave programs are good for business, helping employers reduce turnover and retain workers and increase overall productivity.
We need to create consistency for New York workers and ensure that they have access to paid time off to focus on their health. No one in this state should have to sacrifice their livelihood to save their life. Our current paid medical leave programs are forcing countless New Yorkers to make such impossible choices given that they do not provide workers with job protection, health insurance continuation, a livable wage or the ability to take time off intermittently. The shortcomings of these programs have made it legal for employers to fire patients, like me, for taking time off for treatment. We cannot allow this inhumane policy to persist.
We haven’t seen state leaders so much as tweak our Temporary Disability Insurance program since 1989, meaning patients today receive the same wage that they did almost forty years ago. The maximum amount that families can access is $170/week. Think about what groceries cost in the 1980’s versus what they cost today—that alone is reason to revisit and improve this program.
In failing to make updates to these programs, our state has faltered in meeting patients’ and families’ real needs. But we have an opportunity to rectify that. Senate Bill 172 and Assembly Bill 84 seek to upgrade our state’s paid medical leave program to more comprehensively deliver support to workers battling illness in New York. As a cancer survivor, mother to a two-time cancer survivor and someone who’s suffered under the status quo, I am urging state lawmakers to support this critical, bipartisan proposal.
