Family Man Allergic to the Sun Urges For Your Help

To all those warm and familiar faces that I have had the privilege to get to know throughout the years and to all those new and friendly faces that I have yet to get to know now through this campaign. My name is Raphi Strauss and I am a 36 year old man living with an extremely rare medical disorder called Xeroderma Pigmentosum, where I cannot under any circumstances be exposed to any form of Ultra Violent Rays, having being the biggest one the sun and certain types of indoor lighting. During the day I need to be covered in a special mask and gloves that NASA donated to me at the age of 13, which was when I had started to undergo with full force all of my medical treatments, now being after more than 600 surgeries and 3,000 biopsies to my whole entire body, mostly to my face. I have gone through extensive cosmetic surgery to my face, which required me to continuously take skin grafts from myself and transplant them over areas throughout my body that needed repairs after removing large and deep skin cancer growths. Unfortunately, my long and painful medical journey doesn't just stop there, it is ongoing until this very day, only now it having my wife and 3 children standing at my side, but is nonetheless overwhelming and stressful, especially having to juggle it all with the upcoming new year and all the expenses that it brings. In between my children's school tuitions and back to school supplies and textbooks shopping lists, maintenance for our car that has tinted windows to filter out the UV Rays, so that I can drive safely during the day, which is used on a daily basis for medical appointments, carpooling, errands, and grocery shopping, expenses for groceries, especially now for the Chaggim, expenses for the upcoming Chaggim, monthly medications and medications purchased after the past few recent surgeries, gas for the car, outstanding bills that have accumulated over the past few months that have been put on hold due to more of my recent surgeries, each of our and our children's therapies that are needed, my legal fees to help activate my benefits being disabled, and tinting our windows in the house, so that I can safely open the blinds, so that it isn't always dark inside the house for us and the children, we are still finding it very difficult to cover all that is needed. Even after my wife and I distribute local newspapers 3 times a week during the late night/early morning hours before sunrise, which requires us to stay awake all night and then properly function the following day for our children, despite me being hours after surgery and in a tremendous amount of pain, and my minimal monthly disability stipend, and my wife's minial monthly child support stipend for our children, we are still struggling to make ends meet each month. My monthly surgeries of skin cancer removals and required healing time, limits the amount of physical energy and exertion that I can do workwise, not like your average 9-5 day job, which a lot of times leaves us behind financially in many areas. My wife has been my constant and is always there taking care of me and tending to my medical, physical, and emotional needs, especially me being after surgery, plus attending to each one of our children's physical and emotional needs after they all survived abuse along with my wife from her previous marriage. We are both trying to find our middle ground financially, and at the same time stabilize our family life given the multiple speed bumps we keep hitting when it comes to me medically. Life tends to pull us all in numerous directions at the same time, yet it is still up to us to navigate our way through it all, but at the same time, sometimes we need to stop and ask for assistance when it gets a bit too overwhelming, which is why I am reaching out to all of you. Due to personal reasons, both my wife's and I families are not in our lives, which has left us to cope with it all on our own, where any other couple would not have to experience such lack of love and support from family members and friends, which currently holds true to us. Because we are new to our community and are still in the midst of planting our roots here in Beit Shemesh, Israel, we can really benefit from your generosity to ease the weight off of our shoulders, so that we can remember to stop and inhale deeply and recharge our batteries in order to suit up and help better prepare ourselves for whatever awaits us next, especially with me medically. Any and all assistance would be greatly appreciated and will always be remembered as true kindness in our lives, when so very few have shown us any. Please feel free to reach out to me for any questions and/or comments. Thank you again for taking the time in reading about my campaign. It would really mean a lot to me if you can please share it with all of your loved ones, so that we can reach our goal for the upcoming new year. Shana Tovah U'Metuka to you all, and may we all have the honor of being endlessly blessed this year with all that is truly important: health, sustenance, love, peace, benevolence, and happiness.

Warmest Wishes,

Shani and Raphi Strauss