Councillor Niubó has overcome a thymus cancer: "I feel obliged to explain it"

Barcelona"I feel well and recovered," said the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, this Thursday in her first words after returning to work after being on leave. A medical leave that has lasted two months and for which Niubó has now explained the reason. "I hadn't said it until now, but it was cancer, a thymic cancer, which is a gland located between the lung and the heart," the minister detailed in an interview with SER Catalunya, where she also said she hadn't made it public to protect her family and prevent them from suffering. Now, on the other hand, she states: "I feel a bit obliged to explain it, because other people may be going through similar processes.

Niubó explained that she began to experience symptoms during the Christmas holidays when she noticed she had vision problems. "I felt like I wanted to look in one direction and one eye wasn't focusing where I wanted it to. I couldn't see properly, I had a lot of sensitivity to light, and I got scared when one day I looked at my hands up close and couldn't focus on them." The minister explained that she continued her normal life, also thinking that what she was suffering from could be stress, until after the holidays she went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease that causes some muscle fatigue and which, in her case, affected her eye. Furthermore, this pathology is often linked to thymic cancer, which led doctors to detect the tumor.

Once diagnosed, at the beginning of the year Niubó underwent "major surgery" because there could have been involvement in "important organs," and finally this Tuesday she was able to return to work.

Meeting this Thursday with USTEC

Having been reinstated, this Thursday Niubó meets with USTEC, the majority union in the sector. The meeting comes after two strike calls occurred during the counselor's medical leave, with over 30% of teachers participating. USTEC views the meeting as "a possible gesture of rapprochement" and assures that it is the Government's "last opportunity" to "truly" reopen negotiations.

The union will demand a new union table where the agreement signed with CCOO and UGT last month will be renegotiated. On the other hand, sources from the Department of Education frame the meeting within a series of meetings that the counselor is holding with the entire educational community after returning to work.