This is Brave

This is Brave: Bravely Raising Awareness Through a Pandemic

Hello, my name is Bethany Gambardella-Greenway. I was diagnosed with stage 3a melanoma in august of 2016. I have been supporting “This is Brave” since it first began.

In 2018, I introduced everyone to my journey. It was a big leap forward for me in terms of sharing my story and helping others: https://blog.coolibar.com/bethany-greenway.  

In 2019, I worked through the physical and emotional impact of my diagnosis and learned what I needed to do to stay strong and present for my daughters.

In 2020, I was invited to help introduce you to my amazing friend Patrick Guddal: https://blog.coolibar.com/this-is-brave-warrior-to-warrior/.

This year, in 2021, when Coolibar invited me to write again, I was somewhat stymied. I haven’t done anything! In the past year, I haven’t done any speaking, volunteering, or public fundraising. The activist part of my life was put on pause along with normal life thanks to the pandemic. 

Like a lot of others, the past year was extra challenging. In order to feel some level of normalcy and feel like I was making a difference, I started making masks for friends, family and a local business. All the time I would have spent the year before helping fundraise for melanoma research, I spent making masks.

Still, as an activist, I felt somewhat lost and without purpose. I know I wasn’t alone in this. I kept blogging and talking about my own skin cancer journey, with the added variable that COVID-19 brought into the mix. I put off my six-month skin check and seeing my oncologist. It was a very scary time for me and other cancer survivors.

Before the pandemic, my melanoma treatment has been immunotherapy, Yervoy, which really did a number on my immune system. It’s been more than a year since my last infusion and still when I get a cold or virus, I’m sick for double the time a normal person would be sick for. My immune system basically goes bonkers.

Knowing what we knew about COVID in the beginning, I was so fearful of what could happen if I got it. I am a single mother of two girls, Luciana (9) and Arabella (6). I was beside myself with fear. I’ve now gotten my vaccine; the fear has become less but it’s still present. I fear for my friends and family who haven’t gotten their shots yet, and I wonder what it will be like once we truly find our new normal as a society. Raising awareness in 2021 is definitely going to be different than in years past. At this point who knows what’s going to happen. However, what I am hopeful for is people coming together for the greater good and all those things everyone had to put off during 2020 finally come to fruition.

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