In the middle of game night, my family is loud. The dice clatter in front of us, then off the table, and I snatch them up quickly before the toddlers can wrap their fingers around them. My uncles have only half their hearts in the game, speaking over my turn with bickering voices, the Miami Heat vs Boston Celtics debate forever going on. While they argue, my younger sister chatters in my ear, asking for the second time to leave her the purple properties. I twiddle the silver shoe in my fingers, struggling to think over the swarm of voices, until quiet begins to gather around one conversation demanding the attention of the table.

What’s happening?

It was my mother and grandmother, and in a serious but vulnerable tone, my mother recounts her time at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) as my grandmother listens, my uncles and cousins pausing to tune in with concerned ears and sympathetic eyes.

I roll the dice.

3

Damn. I’m in jail.

I look up to listen, despite already having lived the story—the grueling chemotherapy sessions, the long afternoons spent holding her hand and worrying—but gazing upon the fuzz that’s grown back on my mother’s head and the spark that’s found its home again in her pupils, I know to be grateful. My mother’s oncologist Dr. Janjigian told us we were the lucky ones. She said something that I will never forget: my mother’s prognosis could have been “tragically different” if we lived in a village in La Paz, the one my paternal relatives lived in.

They didn’t have access to advanced technology or modern education, and were victims of a corrupt and unstable government. They were a favorite topic of my grandparents when I was procrastinating my homework or when I didn’t finish my dinner plate. Hearing their names so often at home, it surprised me to hear it invoked at my mother’s hospital. During that ride home, I shuddered to think of my mother’s fate without access to the treatment she received at MSK.

At the monopoly table, my attention shifts to my grandmother, the first generation on my dad’s side to create a life in the states. Born in Bolivia, it was her I sought out after my ride home from MSK. She was my window to the healthcare scene of my relatives in La Paz, so I hit “Record” and witnessed her life’s story. She revisited flirting with the young man on the street, my grandfather, and recalled the childhood pranks and sweet shop visits after school. As she reopened chapter after chapter of her life, I saw that, mixed with bittersweet fondness for the simplicity of her past, was also a pain at her younger self’s struggles. She told me of a world in which she said goodbye to family after the best treatment money could buy wasn’t enough. I listened as my ancestors traveled across the country for experimental drugs and procedures that weren’t yet safety-approved. That is when I truly understood how easily geography could determine your prognosis. With just a roll of the dice, your future was decided the moment you were born. But this time, there was no get-out-of-jail-free card. It was a harsh realization, but one that set me off.

As a result of that interview, I sought global understanding. To what extent was accessible healthcare… inaccessible? In my pursuit of the full picture, I encountered even more alternative realities, those of my family in SoutheastChina and of the countries I’d visited. In some, healthcare was free. Others, it was limited by a lack of research and technology. And still others were based on strictly holistic treatments. Despite their foreignness, these stories found a permanent home in my mind, and I found myself thinking of the people I’d never met before: the ones whose realities made me uncomfortable to confront and yet at the same time, always had me returning to.

Fortunately, my mother and grandmother are not a part of that population. We sit together in a comfortable house, surrounded by people who love us, playing a game of monopoly. But as I look down at the board, its lessons in cunning and patience take on a more sinister meaning. Though I can pay the price of chance with fake money, there is no amount of cash that can un-deal the bad hand 4.5 billion people were dealt. So instead it is up to me to use my knowledge to dare to educate others. While I cannot control the roll of the dice, I can control what the result means for my relatives in Bolivia, and so many others. I can dare to fight for quality, affordable procedures and drugs in rural places. By chance, someone was born in a remote village without access to a hospital. By chance, someone contracts an illness that should have been prevented with a vaccine. These are statistics I can dedicate myself towards doing something about, as they are not statistics. They are people. Be it through technology that makes remote surgery a safe possibility or taking advantage of communication systems to extend awareness and information to rural communities, I must make an impact.

But perhaps my biggest impact will be in breaking down the walls of ignorance and helping others to recognize the privileges they hold. Sitting among my healthy family, surrounded by noise and love, I realize that understanding, knowledge of the many different realities of our world, can be just as powerful as any new technology in fighting healthcare inaccessibility. Any change begins with awareness. So as the board is cleared and my family pushes in their chairs, I make the commitment to even the playing field. I will dig for the stories and struggles that lie beyond my own experience. And perhaps, in daring to see the world as it truly is, I will not only illuminate the corners of my own mind but help others recognize the possibilities that lie in theirs.

A Night of Monopoly

by Eva Rios