My health insurance through the union kept us from going bankrupt and losing everything.
My husband, Alan, was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in February 2004. Right up to the minute of his diagnosis, he looked healthy and fit. He was a non-smoking, young man who skied and played hockey. Around Thanksgiving 2003, he started getting shortness of breath and wheezing and had a hard time climbing stairs. Because he was only 37, none of the doctors even considered lung cancer.
He was the love of my life. When he died 22 months later, I was 36, a widow with three small children.
The two years he fought were intense and heartbreaking, but what was terrifying were the medical bills. Alan’s initial hospital stay cost more than $150,000, and there were many more of those stays. One of the medications he took was $1,000 a month. Alan was a stockbroker but immediately had to stop working because he was so sick. I was the sole provider.
With everything falling apart around me, I could cope with the financial burden because of my health insurance through the union. What helped me survive emotionally was that, thanks to the union, I could go with Alan to appointments and care for him without worrying I would lose my job for missing days.
I’m very pro-union because unions have far greater bargaining power to negotiate for our basic rights as human beings than any one person could do alone.
Iris Zucker is a teacher at IS 10 in Queens.
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