Barbara Akpan
Chicago, Illinois
- Breast Cancer
- Diagnosed in 2000
Barbara Akpan has spent her life caring for others. But, in 2000, Barbara had to start caring for herself.
Diagnosed with Stage IIB breast cancer, Barbara was forced to leave her nursing job at the University of Chicago to begin her treatment. Barbara’s treatments, which consisted of a pharmaceutical cocktail of Adriamycin and Cytoxan, radiation and a 12 week Taxol clinical trial, left her weak and tired. She was forced to apply for short term disability leave.
While waiting for her coverage to kick in, Barbara struggled to pay her mortgage and was forced to borrow money from her daughter to make ends meet. Feeling hopeless, Barbara decided to take charge of her destiny. “I was just desperate to keep living,” she says. So she went back to school, got her Master’s, and began work as an advocate for low-income and minority women with breast cancer.
Now serving on the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force, Barbara works with women who struggle to pay for their treatments and fight the disease. Biologic drugs, like Herceptin, can cost up to $48,000 a year. Many hospitals won’t even offer them to women who don’t have the proper insurance. Faced with no way to pay for the drugs, patients are offered less expensive – and frequently less effective – treatments.
“Women in the working poor are not given the best medicines available to them. If they don’t know what to demand, particularly in terms of drugs, they are not going to receive the care they need,” Barbara says.
And unfortunately, low-income, African-American women are more likely to die than any other women who contract breast cancer. “I’ve met women who have to give up everything just to find someone who will treat them. And then once they arrive at the hospital doors, they are offered an ineffective solution because they can’t afford what could have potentially saved their lives.”
Her work as a registered nurse has been invaluable in helping women navigate the medical system and find ways to pay for the drugs they need. “When Pharmaceutical companies only make trade name cancer drugs, the cost is often times too expense for the working poor to afford. The women need more affordable generic forms of these medications. To the community, it appears that Pharmaceutical companies pay lobbyist to make sure they don’t have competition for their products. And patients are suffering,” Barbara said. “More companies need to be concerned about getting medicine to the patients that need it most.”