Last December, Operating Engineers Local 701 apprentice Makyla Pfuhl was getting into the groove as an operator of heavy construction equipment when she felt a lump in her right breast.
“I’m not the type to go to the doctors,” Pfuhl says. But this was serious. Pfuhl went in for a mammogram and came out with a diagnosis of Stage 3 breast cancer — meaning the cancer had spread beyond breast tissue but not yet metastasized throughout the body.
Breast cancer is rare for someone so young — Pfuhl is 28 — but medical treatment has improved enough that nearly 9 out of 10 patients are still alive five years later. Pfuhl would have some tough times ahead dealing with radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery. But she came to find out she wouldn’t face it alone.
The first challenge would be how to hang on to her health insurance. Pfuhl, in her first term as an apprentice, was enrolled in Regence BlueCross BlueShield through the union health trust, but eligibility for the employer-paid insurance is tied to hours worked. At the time of her diagnosis, she’d just finished working for union-signatory contractor Wildish installing ADA sidewalk ramps in Burns, Oregon, and had been laid off when the work was halted by weather. Wildish put her to work constructing a structure in the equipment yard so she would make enough hours for the month to maintain eligibility.
Pfuhl knew medical appointments might start to get in the way, but she wanted to keep working — and needed to keep working to keep her insurance, she told Local 701 dispatcher Deanna Robles.
“I was like, financially I can’t afford not to work. Plus you want to work to get your mind off stuff. But at the same time, you’ll eventually be so sick that it’s hard to work.”
Robles relayed all that to Local 701 business manager Jimbo Anderson, who called Pfuhl to find out what she needed. From then, Pfuhl says, union officers stayed in close contact, checking in regularly.
A 1985 federal law known as COBRA lets workers stay on their work-based health insurance temporarily after losing eligibility, but they must pay full price — $1,444 a month in Pfuhl’s case. Pfuhl was able to cover three months of insurance payments herself, but the union also helped out.
She started chemo in March. In June and part of July leading up to her surgery, the union training trust found work for her at the training center in Canby.
She also got help from the IUOE Local 701 Solidarity Fund, a charitable fund the union set up four years ago. The union’s lobbying firm, Pac/West Lobby Group, heard about her fight and donated an AR-15 rifle to be raffled off. When the fund held its fourth annual charity golf tournament Aug. 23 at Stone Creek Golf Course, the rifle raffle raised close to $2,000. That covered another month of insurance and helped her keep up with bills.
After three weeks of daily radiation, Pfuhl returned to work in September. Her cancer is in remission.
“I’m getting all my muscle back,” Pfuhl said. “All the stuff that the chemo took from me, I’m slowly gaining it back.”
Pfuhl has a couple more years of learning before she completes her apprenticeship. But her cancer fight came to be an unexpected lesson: what it means to have a union in your corner.
“I just expected to deal with all of my cancer stuff by myself,” Pfuhl told the Labor Press. “It was nice having a union that was able to do so much. They forked out a lot of money, and they were there emotionally too. Union reps were calling me, and at the training center, they checked up on me all the time. It’s definitely a family.”
