Don's Medical Fund

Dear families and friends: This campaign is for Don Philipp, my host father whom I have lived with for two years while attending school in the U.S. Don and Chris have been host parents for over 16 years and have hosted and taken care of students from junior high, high school and college age students, a total of 65 students from over 5 different countries. Don and Chris have no child of their own, but they have given their love and care to all their students who left their parents and came to the U.S. for study. They offered all the students a place where they can feel at home and where they can learn and experience American culture.

Don is a very nice and optimistic person who always smiles and brings laughter to people around him, even now when he is facing a critical health problem. In June 2016, his doctor noticed his kidneys were doing badly but did not know why, so he referred Don to an oncologist who is a cancer doctor. The cancer doctor decided he needed a bone marrow biopsy to find out what was going wrong. So, he had a bone marrow biopsy in March 2017 and finally found out that he had a problem called monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance. It is a bone marrow cancer, but the doctor did not know what was causing my kidneys to go bad. After a biopsy of his kidneys, they diagnosed the cancer he has as monoclonal gammopathy of renal significance.  It is attacking his kidneys, which are only half good now and they will not heal.  

Now Don has started a 6-month course of chemotherapy which include injections once a week and 25 chemo pills a week taken on the weekends. If this is successful, he will go through a bone marrow transplant.  If that does not stop the cancer, he will probably have to go on dialysis for his kidneys and will need a kidney transplant if a good match can be found.  Otherwise, there are no other options except to live a life hooked up to a machine every other day for the rest of his life.

We hope this fund can help to pay what the insurance will not pay. The majority of the expenses includes the cost of chemo injections and chemo drugs, transportation to and from the clinic, time loss from work, the cost of hospitalization for the bone marrow transplant, and possibly a kidney transplant. Funds are needed as soon as possible due to Kaiser Permanente being impatient about being paid for these things.

Don and Chris are trying their best to pay for these medical expenses on their own, but still cannot afford all of them. Therefore, I set up this campaign to help him with what I can offer and also hope to get more support from friends who are willing to help out this loving host family.

Thank you so much for all your help!


Best,

Michelle
A hosted student of the Philipp family