A Crisis of Undiagnosed Cancers Is Emerging in the Pandemic's Second Year

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A factory worker didn’t want to call in sick or catch COVID-19, so she tried to ignore the pain. Now she has stage 4 cancer.

A Crisis of Undiagnosed Cancers Is Emerging in the Pandemic’s Second Year
A factory worker didn’t want to call in sick or catch COVID-19, so she tried to ignore the pain. Now she has stage 4 cancer.
propublica.org
8:26 AM · Jun 2, 2021

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-crisis-of-undiagnosed-cancers-is-emerging-in-the-pandemics-second-year

Teresa Ruvalcaba lay on a bed in the emergency room of Chicago’s Mount Sinai Hospital, her right breast swollen to nearly twice the size of her left, the skin so thick and dimpled that the doctor examining her would note that it resembled an orange peel.

Ojalá que sólo sea una infección, she thought, as she struggled to catch her breath, not knowing she had a partially collapsed lung. I hope it’s just an infection.

For more than six months, the 48-year-old factory worker had tried to ignore the pain and inflammation in her chest. She was afraid of visiting a doctor during the pandemic, afraid of missing work, afraid of losing her job, her home, her ability to take care of her three children. She kept working until she couldn’t, until the pain forced her to ask her son to drive her to the hospital on this cold, cloudy night in January.

Seven miles away, 24-year-old Sergio waited in his cramped childhood bedroom, clothes scattered on the floor and his medical school entrance-exam books untouched on a shelf, his eyes locked on his phone. Sergio usually accompanied his mother anywhere she might need help with her limited English, but because of the pandemic, he hadn’t been allowed past hospital security. After two and a half hours of silence, he texted her in Spanish, “How’s it going?”

*snip*