30 MIN from Sight Saving Surgery

   Could you imagine knowing that if you lived just 30 minutes to the east, in the same country you could have your sight saving surgery paid for?  That is a fact that my best friend Michelle Boich has to live with everyday.  Hi my name is Laura Moses and I want to tell you about the amazing campaign Michelle is putting together. 
   Michelle has a degenerative eye disease called Keratoconus.  This disease causes the cornea to thin resulting in blindness.  You can read more about this disease (here). There are a few options she has.  Michelle is already at the top of her prescription for eye-ware.  She can hope for a corneal-transplant, which in Canada has a waiting list of 3-4 years AFTER you loose your sight.  The last option is a very safe laser surgery, which will have her recovering for about a month.   

This surgery is covered in a few provinces including Quebec; just on the other side of the river from Ottawa where Michelle and her family reside.   Im so proud Michelle has put her foot forward and made the effort for change.  The second week of March Michelle decided she would start a petition to get OHIP (Ontario's provincial health coverage) to change and cover this surgery.  In less then 4 days her petition has been signed over 1,700 and she has been contacted by her Member of Parliament and the local news station.  She'd doing it!  Shes really making a change!  Click (HERE)  to read and SIGN the campaign! As I sit looking through all the comments and names on her petition it got me thinking.  Yet again Michelle is thinking of everyone else.  She even said herself 'I don't feel there should be a price tag on saving your vision. This is not an elective surgery, I did not ask for a degenerative eye disease and I feel our Healthcare programs should be covering the cost of a sight saving surgery which is also the more cost effective choice.'  Michelle is trying to make a change for other people, the ones who are diagnosed in the future.  We are all fully aware of how long it takes to make change happen.  By that time she could be on that waiting list.   

Let me tell you more about how amazing my friend is.

Michelle was born in the Hamilton area where we've had the absolute pleasure of being best friends for more then 1/2 our lives.    Michelle and I stayed very close when I moved away for school, knowing I would never return to the Hamilton area.  Lucky for me Michelle met her soul mate, my roommate and fate would have it, she moved in with him after working through a long distance relationship.  Brain and Michelle have been together now for nearly a decade and have 2 beautiful little girls together plus another 2 bonus children as she likes to call her step kids.Michelle strives to make everyone happy.  She recalls some of her favorite memories were helping the people in her optometrist office where Michelle works.  'I like helping the ones on government assistance the most, they come in, sometimes with no previous eye-ware and walk out with their head held high, confident!  All because I helped them not only see better but look better to.'  Michelle is always the first to volunteer to give back in her community and is always trying to educate people about their peepers.  

My hat goes off to Michelle!  She is what I consider part of the working poor class. I don't know how she does it.  With the cost of rent, day care, food,hydro and expenses Michelle and Brain barely scrape by.  They always put the kids first and Michelle has even gone to the lengths of baking her own bread just to save a few bucks a week.   Michelle also started her own (Scentsy)  business.  For those of you who have never worked a online product business, you need to generate a lot of sales to make it worth your time, so please support her if you can.  

We recently spoke of her finances she told me that it costs about 5,000 to run the house.  I asked how do you do it?  She responded with 'we don't, our bills are probably another $5,000 behind cause we were all so sick this winter.  You get ahead and then life happens and you get so behind, takes you another year to catch up to where you were.'  Now she has to deal with losing her sight.  She wont have an option but the front row to see her kids in the school play.  By the time high school graduation comes around, who knows.

I am hoping that we can raise $10,000 for Michelle Boich and her family.  This is to cover the $6,000 for the surgery so she can continue to contribute to society, drive her self to work and watch her kids walk walk across the stage at graduation.  As well as to help put a dent in their monthly expenses so she can recover STRESS FREE!  Do you know what she said when I told her I was setting this up.  She was worried that people would think she was just trying to get something from this.  I told her I didn't care what she thought, she needs help while she trying to help others.  

I understand if money is tight.  Please just share this page as well as Michelle's (OHIP coverage for sight saving procedure: CXL. Click Here.

If can can afford to support a working mothers online business, please take a look to see how Michelle can (help your house smell prettier; Click here.)

I pray that you can help her in any form you can. 

Much Love, Laura Moses