The toll of COVID-19 goes beyond the virus itself.
A 31-year-old mom of four has died after she was forced to stop chemotherapy for brain cancer while battling the coronavirus. Emma Jenkinson passed away over the weekend, leaving behind her husband and young children who range in age from 11 to 2.
The Manchester, United Kingdom, woman had Stage 4 brain cancer — which she had previously beat at age 24. When the cancer returned, she sought to beat it a second time. She was getting treatment until March. In an effort to contain the spread of the virus, the hospital she was receiving chemotherapy at shut down to non-COVID patients.
But by May, after three months without treatment, her health was deteriorating, although it’s unclear whether that was a direct result of the pause in her treatment.
“She started losing her balance, falling over,” her husband, Andrew, said in an online post. “At its worst she was falling 15-20 times a day.”
At one point, she fell in the family’s garden and hit her head. Andrew had to bring her to the hospital.
“It was later in the month she had a scan and found that the cancer had increased,” Andrew said. She was then placed on chemotherapy “straight away.”
By September, doctors told the family that the chemotherapy wasn’t working. Last weekend, she succumbed to the cancer, leaving behind her children, ages 11, 9, 4 and 2.
Her death is an example of the ripple effect caused by the pandemic.
Experts estimate that the number of people who will die from breast or colorectal cancer in the U.S. will jump by about 10,000 over the next 10 years, as a result of COVID-19’s effect on cancer screening and care.
The lockdowns also have an effect on cancer research — many labs had to shut down, and clinical trials have slowed down. Many researchers are also throwing much of their efforts behind the effect of COVID-19 on cancer — and less on cancers’ cures, writes National Cancer Institute director Norman Sharpless in an editorial published in Science.
“Ignoring life-threatening non–COVID-19 conditions such as cancer for too long may turn one public health crisis into many others,” he wrote.