Lau­ra Packard, a can­cer sur­vivor and Den­ver health care advo­cate, will be the only Col­oradan speak­ing at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion this year.

“To be on the stage, vir­tu­al­ly speak­ing, is an incred­i­ble hon­or,” she said in an inter­view Mon­day. “I would nev­er have guessed 12 years or eight years or four years ago that this would be me.”

The con­ven­tion in Mil­wau­kee is large­ly being con­duct­ed vir­tu­al­ly due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. For Packard, that meant a large pack­age of video equip­ment left at her door with instruc­tions for record­ing her remarks.

Packard’s speech will air some­time in the 7 o’clock Moun­tain Time hour Tues­day night. She doesn’t know yet how long the remarks will run.

Packard, 44, was diag­nosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s lym­phoma in 2017, just as Con­gress was con­sid­er­ing bills to repeal the Afford­able Care Act. Packard main­tains that with­out the ACA, she would be either dead or bankrupt.

It’s that sto­ry she’ll tell Tues­day night. She says the mes­sage she wants to leave con­ven­tion ers with is sim­ple: “Health care affects everybody.”

“As we can see dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, whether you have access to health care … direct­ly affects my health care,” she said. “We’re all in this togeth­er and we need to elect peo­ple like a Pres­i­dent Biden who will work on mak­ing health care more acces­si­ble and more afford­able instead of tak­ing it away from people.”