Eric Branco

Hairy Cell Leukemia is a rare, slow-growing cancer of the blood in which your bone marrow makes too many B cells.  A type of white blood cell that helps your body fight infection. Although is it a rare form of cancer, it randomly selected one of our own on April 6, 2019.  Firefighter Paramedic Eric Branco went in for a routine physical only to find out that he had cancer.  Eric had to stop working immediately because his condition puts him at risk for infection and he needed to start chemotherapy.  Today was his final day of chemotherapy, which consisted of 5 consecutive days for two hours each day.  As you can imagine, treatment is not cheap, in fact each treatment cost over $40k.  It is unclear at the moment how much of that his insurance is going to cover, but we do know that there will be some out of pocket expenses.  Medical expenses compiled with life expenses and providing for his two children, Bianca (10) and Louie (9) can be overwhelming.  I am hoping that we can lessen the financial stress by donating whatever you can.  Anything helps! We appreciate all of your support,  Eric’s brother, Brian Kowalczyk, and step-father, Ted Kowalczyk, have been added to the gofund me as beneficiaries as requested and appointed by Eric to assist in paying his medical & other financial obligations.