Through the Storm
- Eileen McGrath is one of millions in Texas who lost power while dealing with a devastating winter storm. She also was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in early January.
- Cancer patients struggling with the fallout from the winter storm should connect with their care provider to discuss alternate ways of communicating and delivering treatment services.
- Living through a traumatic experience can be an opportunity for introspection. “Once the lights come on and you look at your life, you think, ‘I could have had this a lot worse. Thank God that I didn’t.’ It gives you perspective on what’s important,” McGrath says.
“What if I start feeling bad? Am I going to be able to get in touch with my care team?” she wondered.
Read MoreTrying to Stay Positive
Those first few days after the storm were cold and dark for McGrath. “I felt horrible because I had nothing to do. I couldn’t watch TV. All I could focus on was, ‘Oh my God, I have cancer,'” she says. Though she tried to stay positive, the negative thoughts kept creeping in. “I’m like, ‘I have cancer. And this chemo’s not fun and it’s not fair.”
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Days spent in the quiet and darkness led to the discovery that cancer is more than just a physical disease. “There’s a depression factor to this,” she says. “I kept thinking all week, I’ve done two out of six chemos for this round. I don’t know if I can make it to the next one. I don’t know if I can make it through this one…I wasn’t prepared for the emotional tidal wave that coincided with the arctic blast. The two of them together were almost more than I could handle.”
Reaching for Lifelines
If there could be an upside to McGrath’s experience, it was that living in a hurricane-prone state had prepared her for a storm of that magnitude. After Hurricane Ike, which swept through Texas in 2008, she and her husband had bought a generator. Now they used it to charge their phones, which became a lifeline to her treatment team.
“Houston Methodist (Hospital) reached out to me and said, ‘We’re still here for you.'” The hospital where McGrath was both treated and works maintained power during the storm, but was flooded with extra patients from smaller hospitals that had lost power and water. Still, they made time to contact chemotherapy patients.
Thanks to the hospital’s patient portal, McGrath knew she had a place where she could ask questions of her treatment team, and get responses. “The first time I had chemo, I think I called them at least once a day for things like, ‘There’s blood in my nose — why?’ All these questions come up that you don’t expect.”
The hospital sent several texts to ask how she was feeling. Knowing that her doctors and nurses were only a text message away and were concerned about her well-being gave her “peace of mind.”
Friends and family who knew about her cancer also reached out via text, asking, “Are you ok? How do you feel?”
A New Sense of Perspective
McGrath still has four more rounds of chemotherapy to go, which she’ll follow up with surgery, radiation, and then more chemo. She’s still coming to terms with her cancer, a process of grief and acceptance the storm interrupted.
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“It still shocks me that one little tumor smaller than the size of a dime can put you in treatment for a year and rock your whole world. It’s hard to stay positive, especially in the face of the things that we have going on,” she says.
She’s gained a new perspective about her disease after seeing how significantly the storm impacted so many of her friends and neighbors. “They’ve lost their homes. They can’t go back and they have no food. When you start thinking about it that way, my cancer seems smaller than what most Texans are going through as a result of this storm,” McGrath says.
She’s also found little ways to help herself cope, like the song playlist a music therapist encouraged her to create, which she named “Strength.” “It’s all the songs that make me feel hopeful. When I wake up in the morning and I think, ‘I can’t face this day. I feel horrible. I have no hair’…I play these songs that give me hope and inspiration.”
Living through a traumatic experience has led to introspection, and a new look at old priorities. “What am I doing with my life that I could be doing differently?” she asks. “Once the lights come on and you look at your life, you think, ‘I could have had this a lot worse. Thank God that I didn’t.’ It gives you perspective on what’s important.”
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