Helping My Dad to Fight Cancer

My name, is Elmira! I am not very good in expressing my emotions, yet I would like to tell a story that is emotional for me.  This is not my story, it is an optimistic version of the story that my parents have told me and like all the stories told by parents, it is just a shell version of the real pain, pressure, and the worries that my parents went through.   

    This is my dad's story! Let me start from a year ago, when my dad started to lose a lot of weight, got severe headaches, had extreme pain in his right leg and a slew of other problems that made his life an arduous day to day fight.  They visited lots of doctors, first diagnose was misguided, they thought the problem might be due to his diabetes or migraine.  Eventually he started to have problems in walking and keeping his balance. They did a brain scan that showed a brain tumor, a malignant brain tumor.  That was the first time that it hit me, my dad is not invincible as I always thought he was. After surgery and lots of tests, the doctors told us he has Melanoma; the worst type of skin cancer, which has also metastasized.  "Metastasized" was a new word that I learned that day, a word scarier than the cancer itself. 

    But the brain was not the only organ that was affected, his spine was also affected. A separate surgery was needed on his spine. They started doing radiotherapy on the head and that was followed by Chemotherapy as his lungs were also affected too. The medications that were prescribed by doctors is called Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) which had been approved in 2017. It had to be injected every three weeks, and since my dad needs an amount of 200 miligrams per injection, it costs between $6000 to $12000 per injection depending on the country that the medicine is bought (because they don't produce it in my country). And we roughly pay another $1000 to $2000 extra because of all the import costs, an unstable economy and debased currency and people who would not mind price gauging and making money off cancer patients.

    Initially we relied on the insurance to cover the costs, but they have stopped paying for the last 5 sessions. We live in a country that regulations and rules are not exercised and is riddles with corruption. You know what is harder than getting sick? The pain of seeing my father suffering from cancer could only be superseded by seeing the depth of depravity that my country has plunged into all in the guise of religion.

    Eventually after all the surgeries and radiotherapies and in the middle of chemotherapy that we found some promise of progress. It helped my dad a great deal to stand on his feet, live a life that is a bit closer to a normal life, and more importantly be beside his family.

    And finally, we have a hope that the cancer is under control, but at the same time, we are almost unable to purchase the medicine anymore, after getting tons of loans, selling our car, and borrowing money from family and friends, we are scared that we can't continue the medication. Long story short, from the time that we started the medication, the currency has devaluated dramatically and has strongly affected the purchase power of my family to buy the medications that once seemed our hope to cure my dad. My dad is a retired electrical engineer who earns approximately $400 a month (with today’s exchange rate, it can be much less tomorrow). With my mom's and dad's salary combined the medicine the cost of continuing the medication is 10 to 15 times higher than the combined income of my parents per month.

    Asking for help from people of the world through this GoFundMe is my last resort. And as an individual who have lived in multiple countries and made friends with people from every continent, I believe in people, and in the good that is in the heart of each and every one of us.

    I know my dad is strong, and my mom is resilient and we can get through this, but we just need a little help from you. And believe me, I never realized my dad is in his sixties in a sense that I asked myself "my dad is 60 years old? Really?" until he got sick and I saw him on the hospital bed. I think somehow, we all grow up thinking our parents are invincible until the reality hits us.

    Thank you all in advance for helping a father to beat his cancer and to continue living with his loving wife and 3 children.


------- Update 22.05.2018
   Thank you to everyone who has helped this campaign till now, I have tried to thank everyone either in person or through messages and I say again me and my family's best wishes to you and your families. As most people donating to this campaigne know, I started this fundraising to help my dad, it was not easy for me to make a decision to write and announce to the whole world that my dad is sick and we need money. Believe me, I never knew how hard it must be for someone until it took me two months to just write my fundraising story. And I chose a platform like GoFundMe because I believe in the world and the social intelligence of the individuals who have been through pain and feel the need to help people who are going through pain.

    I wish I could provide this money all by myself for my dad but I am just a doctoral student studying robotics in Switzerland and Portugal at the moment. Before moving to Europe, I lived in South Korea during my masters and gained some working experience, however, I was born in Iran and at the moment my family lives there. As I explained before this fundraising has been created to help my dad. We are raising this fund solely for his cancer treatment and mostly for the purchase of his chemotherapy injection called Keytruda and other medications such as his Osteoporosis treatment. First, I am planning to transfer the funds from GoFundMe to my friend Thomas Perraton in France, because I am moving between countries at the moment and my bank, home and address are changing and he is a trusted friend who knows my family in person and has helped a lot. After that, I am planning to purchase the medicine in Europe and then take it to my parent or send it to them.

   I just want to tell you one last thing, when my dad heard about the help he was receiving from people around the world, the first thing he said was "If I get better sooner than expected and some of the money is left, we will give it to people like me who need money". Your help is not just a remedy to my parents sleepless nights because they don't know how to provide the money, it's planting seeds of hope that he will get better (and nothing is more essential than having hope for a cancer patient).