After Battle with Cancer and Her Insurance Company, Naperville Woman Aims to Help Others

Photo 1: Severino and her husband Dave Eisen celebrate their 19th wedding anniversary Sept 17. Photo 2: Severino and her husband, along with their dog, Tucker, enjoy the weather in a pontoon boat.

Over the summer, Carmen Severino was battling breast cancer. The morning she was set to go into surgery for a double mastectomy, she learned her insurance wouldn’t cover the operation.

But after fighting a public battle with her insurance provider, Severino was able to have the life-saving surgery, as well as reconstructive surgery, which is going well. Every day, the Naperville woman is getting stronger and feeling better.

It’s a fight no one wants to undertake, but after emerging from it, Severino feels grateful, and she’s using what she’s learned to help other women people battling breast cancer to know they a voice.

“It’s so important for you take your own health care into your own hands,” Severino said. “Insurance companies have their own rules to play with, and if you’re not aware of them, they can pretty much manipulate you into doing what they want, not what you need.”

Severino said the people you talk with are not the ones making the decisions.

“The people that you talk to on the phone, they feel for you. They’re not the ones doing this. Their hands are tied,” Severino said. “It’s coming from corporate. It’s coming from whoever is in charge of the bottom line.”

People who are too timid or afraid to deal with their insurance companies are the ones who suffer.

Despite this, Severino is grateful for the insurance she has. The costs of the chemotherapy and the surgeries would have been an insurmountable challenge had she not had any insurance whatsoever.

But when it comes to insurance-company decision making, Severino wants people to know they can appeal and can fight.

In addition to insurance, Severino, a nutrition, health and lifestyle coach, says there are many natural, safe ways to get through the pain and discomfort of chemotherapy and surgeries.

“People don’t know this,” she said. “People will just take drug after drug and pill after pill without question.”

Severino has a Facebook page she uses to reach out to people who are also going through cancer and she’s building a website. As of now, she does have a blog she uses to express her opinions. She also has a book in the works about her experience, which she’s hoping will be released in summer of 2016.

“I’d like to give talks to women’s cancer groups and explain to them their options,” she said, “offer them coaching. I think I can help change other people’s lives.”

With everything Severino faced this summer, she said she’s now at a point where she feels she has a mission she’s passionate about.

“It’s about helping women so no one ever has to go through this again,” she said. “So no one ever feels disrespected or disempowered. As awful as the experience was when it happened to me, it would not have happened if it wasn’t supposed to happen.”