I am sharing my experience with the Affordable Care Act, and I urge Sen. Susan Collins to remain strong and not support its repeal. Access to health care is a human right, and many of us are worried about whether we’ll be able to keep it.

In February 2012, I gave birth to a baby girl. At the time, I was a nurse working on an acute psychiatric unit. I worked up until the night I went into labor, and my daughter was born three days later, on Leap Day.

After a grievously inadequate 12 weeks home with her, which included multiple health issues for me (including postpartum hemorrhaging, surgery to remove retained placenta, two emergency room visits and debilitating anemia), I went back to work.

Not long after, when my daughter was about 5 months old, her father and I separated, and he moved an hour and a half north. In complete shock, I found myself the single mother of an infant. This was not a situation I had ever dreamed of facing.

Thankfully, my child was healthy and thriving, but my job as a nurse was essentially over. Without a partner or family to cover the hours before and after day care, it was impossible for me to work a job requiring me to leave home at 6 a.m., not to return until 8 p.m.

For those who think it would have been easy to just find another job – one that paid well enough to support child-care costs – well, that’s an illusion, especially in the field of nursing, where 12-hour shifts are the norm. It is well documented that being a mother is not a selling point when you are seeking new employment, while the opposite is true if you are a father.

I became a stay-at-home mother because it was my only option. On top of losing income, we also lost our insurance benefits. I applied to MaineCare for coverage for my daughter, and I begrudgingly purchased a catastrophic policy for myself at $120 a month.

HEALTH CONCERNS

Not having comprehensive coverage aggravated my anxiety about a lump I’d found in 2009, when I was just starting nursing school. I was 28, new to Maine and there was a hard lump on my face, next to my left ear, that I couldn’t ignore. I was referred to an ear, nose and throat doctor, who ordered a MRI that showed nothing (even though this was a palpable something). He told me the mass was a “viral process” and not to worry about it. But I did worry about it, for years.

In 2013, when my daughter was almost 1, I began studying online for a Master of Science in nursing. It allowed me to move forward with my life while caring for her. I worked part time teaching nursing students on their mental health clinical rotations, and my daughter went to child care part time. I took out more student loans.

Meanwhile, the ACA was just going into effect. I looked forward to getting comprehensive health insurance once again, and following up on this lump.

It wasn’t easy to get benefits at first. Maine, like almost all states with Republican governors, did not set up its own exchange. This meant getting coverage through healthcare.gov. There were issues with the federal website, and it was incredibly hard to deal with.

But despite my frustration, I signed up for a plan that, with the tax subsidies, cost about $30 a month. I went to my new nurse practitioner to request a biopsy of my lump. It was identified as a pleomorphic adenoma, which, in the early stages, is a benign mixed tumor of one of the major salivary glands. The lump that had been in my body for several years was a precursor to a deadly cancer.

In May 2015, I underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Maine Community Health Options (my ACA insurance company) covered most of it. Without insurance, the medical bills from the surgery alone would have been over $20,000. Given my limited employment and reliance on student loans, if I had not had affordable insurance, the cost of the procedure might have persuaded me to take a chance and leave that tumor in my body. This is a risk that anyone with a young child would not want to choose or be forced to take.

MENTAL HEALTH COVERAGE

The ACA has many important provisions, including mandatory coverage of birth control, preventive screenings and access to life-saving therapies. It has expanded coverage so that young adults can stay on their parents’ insurance plan until they are 26, and insurance companies can no longer discriminate against someone with a pre-existing condition.

One of the best aspects of the law is that it mandates mental health care coverage. Because of social stigma, most of us do not admit that we struggle, but let’s admit it: We do. I do. Thankfully, my therapy appointments have had a reasonable co-pay for years. Otherwise, the $100 out-of-pocket cost would be prohibitive, and frankly, I’d never go unless I were in a crisis.

As a nurse working on an acute psychiatric unit prior to the ACA, I witnessed daily how deadly the lack of affordable mental health care in the community can be. Therapy is vital to the treatment of devastating chronic illnesses like depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, but before the mental health mandate, only people with discretionary income could afford to receive counseling or see psychiatrists who can prescribe medications.

I have my criticisms of the ACA, and I am worried about prices going up exponentially as insurers leave the program. But lawmakers can work to improve the program with input from their constituents.

Meanwhile, the ACA has potentially saved my life by covering an operation performed by an experienced surgeon and by supporting my general well-being through therapy and preventive services. I am healthy, well and able to take care of those in the community; patients, friends, strangers and my family all benefit.

PRESERVE AND IMPROVE

Everyone deserves health care that keeps them from getting to the point of no return. For some, that means cancer; for others it means suicide.

Perhaps those who want to repeal and replace the ACA are lucky enough to have a job that provides insurance or a partner whose job provides insurance. (I wonder how many people are stuck in unhappy or abusive marriages just to keep this benefit.) But those who do not have to worry about insurance are not somehow morally superior to those who struggle without it.

We need to preserve the ACA and improve it. Many in Maine barely eke out a living, and there is no good reason to leave us – and millions of others across the country – without health care coverage. Sen. Collins, you are a humane person who can stand up for what is right.

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