‘Forced to retract completely into ourselves,’ a mother and son confront cancer in the age of Covid-19

Amy Sapien had prepared for her April 13 surgery as best she could. She dyed her long blond hair a bright pink. She got a tattoo on her right calf of what she jokingly calls her spirit animal — Dory, the blue fish from “Finding Nemo,” whose answer to life’s challenges is to say, over and over, “Just keep swimming.” Still, she was overwhelmed by dread early that morning as she kissed her husband, Callen, goodbye outside the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., and walked alone through the bright, empty lobby. Her hands shook as she stepped onto the elevator and pressed the button with her elbow.

Her mind was a jumble. Everyone seemed so eerily expressionless from behind their paper masks that Sapien wondered for a moment whether she’d walked onto the set of an alien abduction movie. She had been imagining for weeks what it would be like to leave the hospital without her left breast. Now her mind turned to an even more urgent fear: What if she became infected with the coronavirus during her short stay?

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