What Jessica Pettways Death Teaches Us About Self-Advocating [Video]

On a Monday morning in October of 2019, I drove to work, tuned into a conversation with my mom, sister, and aunt on my car’s bluetooth. My mother had been hospitalized the week prior with a mysterious illness. For about six months, steady weight loss, fatigue, high blood pressure, and anemia plagued her body.

Her primary care doctor prescribed her medication to lessen her symptoms and suggested stress relieving activities – presumably – assuming the 47-year old single mother was exasperated from 12-hour shifts as a nurse and the burdens of life. Having entrusted her healthcare to him for the past decade, she took his recommendations without thinking twice.

However, worsened symptoms, coupled with dizziness and shortness of breath, led her to the emergency room that fateful week. After a series of medical exams and scans, the doctor came in to share her diagnosis – stage 4 colon cancer. The …