Selva Marion Álvarez faces an absurd paradox: this Paisa data scientist who, through her work, has learned to know the inside of the health system better than anyone, says she is between life and death: He has been waiting for more than a month for Sanitas, his EPS — intervened by the national Government since April 2 — to authorize an urgent surgery, with the technique of sugarbakeras part of his treatment for an aggressive gastric cancer.
The devastating diagnosis came in November of last year, after I started feeling a mass in my belly button. “I had done a bad posture in the gym and I felt a pull, and a few days later I noticed a lump there and I thought I had a hernia. But that mass began to grow more and more and turn red. I panic. A doctor actually diagnosed a hernia and they scheduled me to have surgery for it,” says Selva Marion.
But when they operated on her, the doctors were surprised: Selva was not only misdiagnosed, but they discovered a strange tissue that, after several tests, they discovered was associated with cancer.
A cancer that is currently in stage four and is metastasizing to the abdominal wall. “With the therapies the tumor has been shrinking, but surgery is vital to complete the treatment. I guess the EPS inexplicably takes its time. But it’s time that I don’t have for my life. My cancer does not wait for administrative procedures, my right to health is not guaranteed,” says Selva in WEEK.
From that moment, says the 33-year-old woman, “they began to put obstacles and more obstacles in my way.” All this despite the fact that a team of specialists, weeks ago, had already evaluated her case. “It was in a medical board in which there are eleven professionals, among them a clinical oncologist, a hematologist, a surgeon. Everyone agreed that she was a candidate. What the other doctor did was invalidate that measure,” says the patient with resignation.
Given the neglect she felt in her case, Selva had no choice but to file a protection order, which a judge ruled in her favor. And on June 7, according to the patient, the incident of contempt began due to non-compliance with the measure. For this reason, last Monday, June 24, the sanction was issued with an arrest warrant and a fine of almost 20 million pesos.
“This arrest warrant is for a legal representative and for people with other positions within Sanitas, let’s see if they react with that. What I believe is that now that they are intervened by the Government, they should resolve these cases more quickly, especially in the case of a patient as serious as me,” says Selva.
He assures that Every day that passes is a race against death. “When I was diagnosed, my oncologist explained to me that I would have four cycles of chemotherapy, one surgery, and then another four cycles. When I was in the third cycle, he told me that it was better to get ready for surgery and I had an appointment with a gastroenterologist surgeon.
But this doctor would warn him that it was better for him to “see another specialist because my cancer had migrated to the abdominal wall and the most appropriate thing to do was to rule out the possibility of involvement in other organs. And there I began to suffer. Because I had to go out to look for specialists in Medellín, Bogotá, Cali. And I had to start looking for authorization for that oncological surgery. They authorized it for me and sent me to a clinic called Soma, but there they explained to me that they do not provide that service. I went back to Sanitas to tell them that. Do you not know what types of contracts you handle? I asked them. What they are doing to me is a real carousel of death,” the patient says with anguish.
While he waits for his EPS to finally resolve his case and authorize a surgery that costs close to 200 million pesos, Selva sees his quality of life diminished: “My mobility has been greatly reduced. I have lost sensitivity with my hands, I can’t stretch them. I live with cramps, which are peripheral neuropathies. In addition to the impacts of chemo, such as hair loss. I feel fatigued all the time, I can’t walk even a block. I just eat whatever happens to me, whatever my body tolerates due to nausea. I am no longer able to sit in a chair to work and that is why I stopped doing it three weeks ago. This changed my life completely,” says Selva.
He does not deny that he thinks about death all the time: “I fear that the cancer will kill me first before I am authorized for this surgery. This has been a life lesson. “It has taught me to enjoy the little things, I just have to have faith, I have fought as far as I could.”
