Tim's Medical Fund

Coming up with a narrative is hard when my family doesn't usually ask for help. My Mom is having trouble doing this because as a volunteer for years, she is better at giving to others. So here I am doing it for her.

 

My parents are good solid people, married for 25 years, devoted to each other and their six kids. They have raised us with a sense of responsibility and charity, by example. There wasn't a time my Mom wasn't helping a person or an animal, always in ways no one but the subject of her help and her family would know, using none of the “look at me” hijinks that became popular, all while raising six kids. My Dad would selflessly not only support his family, but he also never spared or resented any cost in helping others in any big or small way.

 

Now what would bring me to Go Fund Me? Well unfortunately, everything was fine until a series of events starting with my Mom getting extremely ill. She had been fighting illness for some time and Doctors were unable to find the cause, which led to her needing emergency surgeries. She spent weeks at a time in the hospital, none of us knowing if she would make it or not. Thankfully she did each time, even with this process repeating several more times. Many times she didn't have diagnoses, she just had questions, and we all had confusion.

 

As a family, we rallied together, taking turns sitting with Mums at the hospital while Dad worked. Dad would come straight to the hospital after work and sleep in a chair next to her bedside each and every time never knowing one day to the next what the outcome would be.

 

There still really aren't any answers to the how when or why for her, and the surgeries and illness has left her a skeleton who is weak physically. She doesn't have the strength to walk far, and she has to be careful what she eats. Mums was always healthy and fit and had to be for the types of volunteer work she got involved in before her illness began in late 2013. Today, as an end result of her prior surgeries, she has a “Motility Disorder”, and an “Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm”.     

 

However, she isn't the reason for me coming here, she is just the background and it is necessary to know how weak and ill she is to understand how she is incapable of doing much herself.

 

Dad handled her bouts financially and emotionally well. He stayed on top of it, health insurance helped too. But just as we got to get comfortable that ‘yeah Mums was going to have a tough road in front of her but she would be basically okay’, just as it looked like the Doctors and her had figured out enough to keep her out of the murky waters of illness and know the symptoms of hers that pointed to troubles ahead, we found out Dad had cancer.

 

Now the good news is we wouldn't of known had it not of been for Mom being in the hospital, because she noticed things about Dad and asked her Doctor, who recommended that Dad see a Doctor, and then blam! The big C.

 

Trying to look back and recount for you the details is actually confusing now, so I'll recount it the the best way I can, and I'm leaving out all the struggles with insurance because that would make this story a novel, but insurance definitely didn't make it easy to get treatments or tests and caused this to drag out too long. They kept requiring his doctors to keep showing proof it was necessary no matter if it was treatment,tests or scans.

 

Cancer the Doctor said he had- Bladder Cancer. They did an emergency surgery called a TURBT to see if it had gone into muscle. It had. Chemotherapy came next. Dad’s job was understanding and caring, and for a good portion Dad kept working, he didn't take time off except for times he had to for tests or treatments, and even when he did he still took calls and handled business. My Father has never been very good at not working, his work ethic is through the roof inspiring.

 

Dad didn't do well with chemotherapy though, he began losing his eyesight and hearing. He had to go get cataract surgery, the cataracts had been caused by the chemo. His Doctor took him off of the first chemo treatment plan, and that was December 2014. After the New Year of January 2015, Dad was put on the second chemotherapy plan, which was also canceled shortly later because of complications. Dad's platelet count dropped to under 2,000 but now it was Mum's standing at his bedside taking care of him. We were worried as a family with the chemo being cut short. The doctor said he would run scans to see where we stood.

 

So finally the scan, and thankfully the scans showed the cancer was gone! We knew Dad was Stage 2, T1,N2, M 1 (The classifying of M1 was only based on the cancer being in the bladder but it was possible that the TURBT had removed it all.) so this was winning the lottery news. More waiting for insurance to approve of additional scans hoping time would prove that it wasn't metastatic by nature. We waited for the results on the edge of our seats, all of us including dad still going about life, working, taking care of mom and him.

 

Then came the answer, yes cancer free! Cells were not “glowing” anywhere. We had made it!

 

But of course if that was the end of this story, I wouldn't be here would I? Apparently he wasn't cancer free, he didn't even get to be “cancer free” for three months before the extreme pain in his back started. He dealt with it at first, thinking he had pulled his back, because he had thought he was healthy again. He had gained the weight back, gotten his hair back although now it was curly hair and not straight. He had been happily back to work, even though his job itself was downsizing.

 

But the pain got worse, and then it was in his hip, and he was starting to lose some of the weight he had recently gotten back.

 

Back when my mom had been so deathly ill, Dad had promised her if she made it he would take her on a trip. He said how it could almost be the honeymoon they never had, they never went on a single vacation the whole time they've been married either. So Dad and Mom went on a short trip away from home.

 

When they left Dad still seemed like the healthy one on the mend even though he had recently lost enough of the weight he had just regained. He needed new pants for the trip, and additionally he occasionally needed to use Mom’s wheelchair because he was having trouble with the pain.

 

He went to some Doctors before the trip, slightly worried about cancer because anyone who has done that battle always has that deep down scare when they have any issue with pain or illness, but the Doctors said it was just a herniated disk, and possible degenerative bone disease, nothing more. The diagnosis wasn’t ideal, but it was still a sigh of relief.

 

There was an appointment set up for when my parents returned with his Doctor who had seen him through the cancer, they couldn’t get an appointment before, and not during the time frame their trip was to be, so they decided to try and enjoy it, they had learned time was precious. The cloud of Degenerative Bone Disease was a cloud, but a small one compared to all the storms that had passed.

 

The trip was only five days, when they got back, dad didn't fit in his new pants at all, and he had a lot more trouble walking, he was now being pushed by Mom in her wheelchair because walking was unbearable pain. He went to the appointment, and his Doctor was upset that the other area doctors hadn't   notified him as a professional courtesy that it was a herniated disk. It wasn't degenerative bone disease, because the x-rays clearly showed it was bone cancer in his spine and his hips. The amount of weight Dad lost on those five days, and the increased pain showed it was aggressive.

 

There is no answer now if it was ever bladder cancer  at all, rather it now looked as if it was always bone cancer, that had already metastasized into the bladder.  They had rid Dad of the secondary thinking it was the primary, allowing the primary to grow stronger even through the chemo rounds.

 

Dad still worked this time too. Chemo and radiation was ordered even though Dad had reacted so badly the last 2 times with chemo treatments. This chemo was more to shrink the tumors in his back and hips to reduce the pain, especially since no pain medication was helping with the pain, not the patches or morphine or any of them.

 

But Dad still worked, and mom still struggled to take care of him even though she herself is/was struggling with her own health. Dad still worked until his company downsized even more, needing to let him go.

 

All of us kids are doing our best to help, but while Dad has been going through this last battle with the big c, the cost of treatments, tests, and scans is now squarely on their own shoulders. So now the bills are too much. It costs so much for a single treatment, let alone the tests and the rest. There aren't jobs that hire actively ill employees, and at this point, even if they did, Dad is too weak. He has to be careful in going to his appointments because his immune system is too compromised.

 

There are programs but they take time, time that it looks like Dad won't have. Now I'm not getting all doom and gloom because none of us are, we are still going for “we will beat this” and we will pick up the pieces. Us kids are trying where we can in any way we can, unfortunately the world doesn't stop still when a loved one is sick and needing help. Some of us kids have moved back home just to help, some of us are doing what we can financially, some of us are doing the driving since neither parent can, but it isn't enough. It isn't fast enough either.  I called Mum's last night to ask how dad was since seeing him this past weekend and how she is holding up. She always says everything is fine but I knew something wasn't. I finally got her to tell me. She told me that even though Dad has worked since age 14, his SSI disability won't provide medical help until 24 months have passed, also Dad's oncologist's office had called saying … all appointments have been canceled.   

 

Knowing this now is the reason I'm making this GoFundMe page with hopes that funds can be provided so Dad can continue his fight. We know he can do it, but not if treatment and meds are cut off. I THANK anyone willing to share this page or those who can contribute! We sincerely need HELP.