Laura Martial: “My story for the law on the right to be forgotten”

Laura Martiali had cancer when she was very young. When she expected everything from her life except cancer. Her path after her illness is that of many cancer patients called “AYA” (from Adolescents and young adults), for whom today in Italy a law on the right to oncological oblivion is more than ever necessary. The reason she told herself a few days ago from the stage of the Festival di Salute 2022.

After graduating in Law and graduating from the National School of Theater Improvisation and Vicolo Cechov Theater, Laura Martial founded “C’e tempo” Odv, a voluntary association which, using the language of art and theater, proposes events of dissemination, information and training in the oncology field. On Oncoline we publish her testimony, which she wrote and presented at the conference “Get up Stand up for AYAs with cancer” which was held last month in Milan.

Cancer, the request for a law for the right to be forgotten reaches 100 thousand signatures

by Tiziana Moriconi

September 30, 2022

Get up Stand up

by Laura Martial

“When the doctor told me that I had cancer, I didn’t know exactly what my path would be, I didn’t know if I would actually survive or what were the steps to take, despite having already experienced the oncological pathology in my family. In the months following the surgery and the therapies I thought it was over there. I was wrong. I was enormously wrong. Cancer has divided my existence into a BC and an AD, useless to deny it and useless to contradict it. The life I lived in AD was and is certainly more intense, there is a quality of time that I would never have imagined before. Often, however, I ask myself a question: what is the price of survival? Having cancer at a young age means returning to the ‘society of performance’ that is different, broken, vulnerable, frail and, in my case, even without reproductive capacity. This might be enough to make me a person on the fringes of what is the unbridled race towards the illusion of recognition and success. And if this were not already complex and my personal path of acceptance and processing of the disease and its visible and invisible consequences were not complex, and it was not complex to manage the sense of guilt for having survived, here is the company presents another barrier at the entrance to the reintegration. Only three words, short, direct, incisive: you can’t “.

‘You can not’

“I heard this in a car dealership when, together with my mother, I went to see my possible new car. The gentleman in front of me was talking to his trusted bank and ‘You can’t, we can’t get a loan if you have had an oncological pathology, your mother should do the practice! ‘. And I heard this from a bank manager when, a few years ago, I went to inquire about a possible loan. the mortgage that for the loan: ‘We in extremis can grant you the loan, but you would never have insurance coverage, so either you take the risk of having a loan without insurance or you don’t do anything about it!’. Once, in prey fear of dying, I contacted an insurer friend to understand how life insurance works. Yes, I inquired about all these things because up until that moment I had not needed these financial services, I was smaller and also a little ignorant on the subject, I admit. He too replied ‘I love you, but knowing your situation is difficult. If they were to give it to you, the rewards would be very high! ‘.

And, finally, I heard from a social worker that ‘you can’t’ when, during a purely informative meeting on the possibility of fostering or adoption, she told me ‘you are not married already so you lack the necessary requisites, let alone if you have had the cancer!’. I won’t forget that grin. I thought I had the wrong dealerships, banks, insurance companies, consultants, but then, without knowing it, I realized that it was not possible with anyone. Ten years had not yet passed since the end of the treatment of the pathology that I had had but, even if they had passed, I would not have been able to exercise my protection because in Italy there is no law that regulates this protection “.

How do you make room for dreams?

“Well, here today I ask myself and I ask you (and it is obviously a provocation): what is the sense of fighting for scientific progress in the oncological field, what is the sense of strengthening prevention systems and saving as many lives as possible if then, in the of the ‘after’, are we people left completely alone? How does a 10-year-old child rebuild from scratch? How can a father or mother who would like a loan, perhaps to allow the education of their sons or daughters? girl of less than thirty years to give space to dreams? How do you return to life? “

An invisible disability

“What then, the thing that most angers me and for which I feel embarrassed is that people like me, with invisible disabilities, are often not believed and are laughed at when they ask for benefits for their disability. I have many physical problems that are a consequence of cancer that I have had and I often ask myself: why in the face of invisible disability ‘we have nothing’ and in the face of bankers, insurers, business owners in the professional field, social workers and counseling centers we are sick people or people without guarantee and no future? We always lose. We lose both when we want to access the protections that are due to us as people with disabilities, and when we do not want to declare the illness we have experienced or when the illness we have experienced becomes an insurmountable obstacle “.

A violation of the Constitution

“I don’t know about you but I call this unequal treatment. This is a violation of article 3 of our Constitutional Charter which requires us with equal dignity without distinction of personal and social conditions. This, on a human level, I call discrimination and it is a task institutions to remove this disparity as it is our duty not to underestimate it. We and I have the right not to be discriminated against and not to be stigmatized. I hope that Italy will soon have its own discipline on the right to be forgotten oncology. that the bills can find new light and a new place on the legislator’s agenda. I hope that banks and insurance companies will do their informative task when it comes to putting the law into practice. it will be a question of accessing the adoption procedures. I hope for the good work of the body of the consultation if it should ever be established and and also the professional sphere can assert its protections. I know perfectly well that every part of this great negotiating table must be protected but I know for sure that we cannot make people who have had cancer live a half life “.

Let’s stand up for our rights

“My voice alone will not go far, but our work today and your daily work can get us to the right places. So that the right to oncological oblivion can be information for every doctor, for every lawyer, for every professional, for each association, for each person with oncological pathology, for each family member and caregivers. And I conclude, all this does not mean that each person should forget what they have experienced, on the contrary, everyone decides for themselves what to do with their path of illness and of healing, of one’s physical and psychological path. This means protecting each of us every time we are asked to declare a passage in our life that not only becomes a social, relational and family obstacle, but also becomes a trauma that repeats itself without stopping in the folds of our being. Stand up, rebel. Rebel for your rights, said a song. And obviously I’m not giving up. “