Turning a Big Negative into a Big Positive
Erin Richard's Story
- Publisher
- HARP Publishing The People's Press
- Initial publish date
- Dec 2019
- Category
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780993829529
- Publish Date
- Dec 2019
- List Price
- $23.25
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Where to buy it
Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels
- Age: 13 to 18
- Grade: 8 to 12
Description
How does one live with cancer? Each person confronted with cancer has to make a choice, it seems, how to do this. The cancer experience—fraught with aggravation, apprehension, and with varying degrees of suffering—doesn’t appear to offer much by way of choice. Nonetheless, each person tries to find a way to persevere, and each has their own story to tell.
This book tells part of Erin’s story, and how she lives day-to-day in cancer’s shadow. Erin is a regular person, a wife and a mother, who is trying to put one foot in front of the other, proceeding in life like us all—but with the vital difference that at the age of thirty-nine she developed a life-threatening illness—stage four breast cancer. She has gone through a slew of treatments that work for a time, then seem to stop working. Erin lives with the knowledge that one day the oncologist will very likely have no more potions to offer.
About the authors
Contributor Notes
About the Author
My name is Erin Richard, and I was born and raised in Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Brian and Marilyn
Gallivan. I was raised in a close knit community called Whitney Pier, which is made up of numerous
diverse ethnicities. I graduated from Holy Angels High School (an all-girls school) in 1994. I met
my husband, Joseph, in 1995 and was married in 2001. We have a son Dylan who graduated
from High School and Community College. I also graduated in 2004 with my Early Childhood Education
from a local Career Academy training school in Sydney, N.S. I worked at ninety percent of all the
daycares in my local community for seven years, ranging from infants to school-age children. I then
worked in a local fast food restaurant fora year till I was diagnosed with cancer.
Excerpt: Turning a Big Negative into a Big Positive: Erin Richard's Story (by (author) Erin Richard; preface by Tom MacNeil)
The Cape Breton Cancer Center did a research study on cancer patients living on only fifteen weeks
of EI Sick Benefits during treatments, to find out about how they were coping
with very little money. I was involved in this study to try to make a change. In July, 2017, I took
on the fight alone to try and increase the EI Sick Benefits to fifty weeks. I went around my
community as well as on the internet with a petition, and collected over 1000 signatures to be sent
to Ottawa, with my former local member of parliament. My name was mentioned in parliament about my
petition, as well as my having cancer. I also went on CTV Atlantic to talk about my situation and
what I was trying to do, and my interview was aired on September 3rd, 2017. The outcome was that
the Canadian government decided not to change the EI Sick Benefits to fifty weeks. The government
reasoned that it would be too expensive, and that there are other forms of money people can receive
as well, including Canada Pension Disability and money from their own province. But not everyone,
including myself, qualifies for Canada Pension Disability. I am hoping that some time in the near
future, the government will understand that cancer is for life, not just fifteen weeks; and will
decide to increase the EI Sick Benefits for future patients.
Editorial Reviews
Erin says that developing cancer changed her from a shy person to someone not afraid to speak her
mind. Cancer also reignited her interest in photography, painting, and acting. She is now nurturing
these innate abilities, and putting them to work.
Cancer has made her more acutely aware of societal injustices, and has prompted her to fight for
longer sickness benefits for people with cancer who, like herself, can no longer work. Since cancer
overtook her life, she has become a basketball fan—a sport, prior to cancer, that she cared nothing about.
And now she has written this book. How many of us get to write books? With a husband, a son, a
father and mother, and friends; and with bills to pay, meals to cook, things to do and places to
go—she has a lot of life going on! It has been my privilege to get to know Erin. She has taught me,
by way of example, how to live life more fully.
I am reluctant to say this, but if it wasn’t for cancer I would likely never have met Erin. Not
Erin’s “bigger positive,” but certainly mine!
Tom MacNeil, Oncology Social Worker, Cape Breton Cancer Center, Sydney