One week after her first chemotherapy treatment in 1992, Jane Karuschkat, 45, was fired from her job.

“I can’t afford to keep you anymore” was what she was told by her boss.

Karuschkat later went to the New York Human Rights Commission and won a $70,000 judgment against her boss for discrimination.

But this isn’t the type of case you hear about once in your life.

Our country already faces discrimination based on sex, race and sexual orientation. Discrimination based on a person’s physical well-being could very well be added to that list.

According to a survey last week issued by Working Woman magazine and Amgen, a California company that makes drugs for chemotherapy, employees with cancer are fired or laid off five times more than other employees.

However, when cancer patients do work, they are often stripped of important tasks because supervisors believe treatment will slow them down.

In Karuschkat’s case, the cancer reappeared after she returned to work and had a second mastectomy.

But she said that having a job was an important motivating factor in her life.

In a May telephone survey by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that included interviews with 500 cancer survivors who worked while undergoing treatment , 81 percent said their job helped their emotional stability during treatment.

Employers should be sensitive to the needs of workers with cancer, or any life-threatening disease for that matter.

But they should not underestimate a worker’s capabilities because of his or her suffering.

Employers also should not assume that the quality of an employee’s production should decrease because of an illness, although side effects can have a psychological bearing on the patient.

Karuschkat said her work wouldn’t have suffered, as she did oil paintings and gardening during her first mastectomy.

It’s important for employers to be open to and appreciate the efforts workers with life-threatening diseases are putting in, so cases like Karuschkat’s don’t arise again.

Cancer victims may already lose their lives to cancer. They don’t need to lose their livelihoods by losing their jobs.