Around a year ago, our Chicago correspondent Claire Bushy found out that she had breast cancer.

Claire has always been very healthy, so the diagnosis was pretty shocking to her.

The breast cancer had spread to her lymph nodes, which meant she had to have surgery,

and then eight rounds of chemotherapy and then radiation.

It was really bad.

There was only one upside to this whole thing, assuming these things even can have an upside.

And that was that Claire had really good insurance through the FT.

So the treatment was at least manageable financially.

She didn't really have to keep tabs on what her doctors were charging or what her insurance was paying out. She knew she was

covered. But then, as the weeks of treatment stretched on, she thought to herself, actually,

I would really like to know how much all of this is costing.

When did you start to ask yourself that question? Like, what does my life cost?

Well, gosh, at the beginning, at the very beginning, right after diagnosis, I thought I was going to read books about cancer.

Yeah, no.

But I got a copy of the undying by the poet Anne Boyer.

She was 41 when she too was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And she ended up writing this sort of

meditation that like won the Pulitzer Prize and I had like read some reviews of it and the

line had been mentioned how many books to pay back the world for my still existing would I have to

write and that just like stayed to pay back the world for my still existing, what I have to write.

And that just, like, stayed with me, even though, like, I could not read the rest of her book.

I still have not been able to finish her book.

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