Financial hardship due to cancer – We have all heard those words, but until they represent you it is truly hard to understand their true meaning.
Our world has been turned upside down in every possible way. First you are in the fight for your life. Then you are in a fight to make sure you get all the treatments possible so you can survive the cancer. Then you fight to make sure the doctors and clinics do right by you and your family. Then you fight with the insurance company you have been paying premiums to for years to get them to pay even a fraction of the charges they see fit to say are allowed. Then to get them to tell you why they won’t pay certain things because they are “experimental” even though it is consider the normal treatment or test for your type of cancer. Then comes the hardest fight that should never be part of the fight with cancer – the financial fight to pay for everything that it takes to try and survive cancer and keep a roof over your head.
Being two people who have lived by the code of right and wrong, always paying you own way it has become very difficult to fit within the system of money is more important than a person’s life. I have spent many hours filling out financial papers just so we get the right to make payments to over 50 different doctors, 5 hospitals, 2 cancer clinic and various other things like anesthesiologist, radiology, labs, and many other I had to figure out if Dave even had seen them or had anything actually to do with them.
You are unable to work so you have to figure out since you are not able to make a living how you are actually going to meet all your obligations. It becomes so very over whelming. I never understood how people became homeless and living on the street until all of our savings was gone and we didn’t have the ability to take care of ourselves. Now I can see just how quickly you world can be gone and you’re out in the street. No one should have to go through that feeling but it is the world we live in. It is what it is.
Our family has helped us in every way possible but our burdens are great. In one year we have spent over $ 1 million dollars just trying to save Dave’s life. That is a number I could not even imagine would have been in our lives - and that we spent $1,000,000 in medical bills. Who in the normal world could pay a million dollars out of pocket and not feel overwhelmed. Obviously the insurance has paid part but limits have been met and blue cross in not paying hardly anything at this point. Working class people just don’t have that kind of money lying around that it takes to pay for something like this. That does not include the money we spend every week on gas going to doctor’s appointments, living expenses, and don’t even think about anything breaking down because there is no way to pay for repairs.
So that brings us to why we are part of the lighthouse. We are overwhelmed in every way possible and we need your help!