SUMMARY
My wife has Cancer. Lymphoma, which was likely spread by a counterproductive open heart surgery which was conducted following two false negative biopsies. We are swallowing our pride in an attempt to alleviate some of the fiscal burden that shrouds our future. If my wife does survive this, her future shouldn't involve the cumbersome ball and chain that a medical debt would bring.
THE DETAILS
At just 24 and 20, My wife and I already had an unexampled, story which we thought was fit for a disney fairytale. As it turns out, it may be better suited as a shakesphearian tradgedy with a beautiful body followed by a swift catestrophic ending.
My wife and I met in China and lived together there for two years. She gave up her lifes plans to stay by my side in a strange country and I reciprocated her two year commitment and love by bringing her to America to be my wife. I used the money I saved during my three year time working overseas to set up our life and pay for her legal immigration costs. (a very expensive endevor). I got us a car, a flat, and was going to start putting her through college. We got married in February of 2016. On my birthday, April 10th her body abruptly shut down. She couldn't breath, and was having problems maintianing conciousness. I took her to the ER and on that day we found out she had a large mass in her Posterior mediastinum which was causing plurisy and cutting off blood supply to her brain. After two biopsys proved benign (one traditional and one surgical) they decided it was safe to do open heart on her to cut out the mass which they believed to be an enlarged thymus. After cutting out 50% of the tumor, the on site oncologist did a disection of the mass and realized to their horror that the tumor wasn't benign at all, It was lymphoma (Cancer). They immediately bailed out, leaving the remaining 50% attached to her pulminary artery and left lung. The cancer may or may not have been spread by that open heart surgery.
She starts Chemo on May 25th and will be fighting through a chemo regimine for the next half a year. After that she will undergo targeted radiation to the area between her heart and left lung.
The problem with all this is that we hadn't been in the US for very long, and most of our china earnings were eaten up by the immigration and resettlement process. We also have terrible insurance, which seemed logical at the since we appeared to be so young and healthy. It didn't make sense to get top coverage. Miraculously I did have some insurance through my company which I picked up JUST before this incident started! Since it happened so fast however, I am already facing nightmarish claims issues (partially because her immigration scans in slovakia show that she had a mass, but the slovak doctors never reported it). nevertheless since the mass is present it opens us up for debate. Even if I win those battles, it only covers 70% in the end.
Our new life in America shouldn't start with crippling medical debt or stress about weather or not we have any future. That isn't the American dream I intended for her. I was going to put her through school and buy her a vehicle and she was going to work hard and fight the world by my side. Now instead we are fighting cancer & hospitals all our days. Its quite a lonely battle at the moment as we are pretty isolated in our area.
The Fiscal Breakdown:
Honestly I have no idea what all of this is going to cost in the end. I know that 30% is our burden to bear, and 30% of Chemo, open heart, 2 biopsies, radiation, anesthesia, and countless days of inpatient stay, all amounts to a fiscally crippling sum of money. We have come to accept the fact that we will likely be battling with the medical expenses for a while. There is no way to avoid this fate. What I would like help with however is the cost of other things. It can cost as much as 10-12,000 just to freeze an embryo to ensure that we can have children. 500-$800 a year for preservation fees, 5000 for thawing and re-implanting. even a decent wig will probably be expensive. There is the cost of plane tickets for bringing her mother to the country, (which is imperative cause it might be their most critical time together).
I WANT MY WIFE TO MAINTAIN HER HOPE, I WANT HER TO REMEMBER OUR DREAMS AND NOT GIVE UP IN THE FACE OF DAUNTING ODDS OR CRUSHING DEBT. I WANT HER TO FEEL LOVE, NOT JUST MINE BUT THE LOVE OF ALL THE WORLD. I WANT HER TO KNOW THAT PEOPLE CARE, THAT SHE IS NOT ALONE, THAT THERE IS A REASON TO KEEP FIGHTING AND THAT SHE HAS A FUTURE WORTH FIGHTING FOR.
HOW WE MET (Long, amazing story made short)
I met her in China. I was fresh out of college working my first white collar job in product sourcing. She was just passing through Asia doing modeling jobs. We met in the streets of shanghai. One of the male models had gotten lost in China, I was walking by a venue on my day off and was approached by a stressed manager. I agreed to fill in for the lost model, it appeared to be an interesting way to spend my day off. I met my wife that day on the runway of a production in downtown Shanghai, the most populated city in the world. She was abused by her agency/handlers in China shortly thereafter and I came to fight them and rescue her. I brought her to stay with me for a while and became her temporary manager and chinese language teacher. Eventually we managed to get her rogue solo jobs and life started to get comfortable. We slowly fell in love while we worked to get her a ticket home. She decided to give up her life plan and her home to stay with me in China. That also proved difficult, as her visas in china required a lot of red tape and necessitated that we travel all over asia every few months to migrate in from a different country each visa period. Eventually we grew tired of fighting red tape, spending our lives traveling internationally and spending all our hard earned money getting visas just to be together in a country neither of us called home. Rather than give up on us, I brought her to America and married her. Within a few months of our marriage, on my birthday, she had been admited to the ER for what would later turn out to be cancer. We fought so hard to be together and we aren't going to lose everything now! She will find a way to survive for us and I am trying to make sure that when she does we still have a future worth living for!
MY REQUEST IS THAT YOU HELP ME GIVE HER A REASON TO FIGHT. By either alleviating the burden of some of our medical debt, or simply ensuring we have a chance at building a family someday.
If you donate anything at all, contact me/us we will likely reach out to you personally. We are alone in this, and our gratitude extends well beyond the numbers associated with your donation. Your simple interest in our life gives us as much of a reason to fight as a couple pieces of paper can. This event taught us life is never about money, its about love. money is just a vessel for the love of those who are distant.
My wife has Cancer. Lymphoma, which was likely spread by a counterproductive open heart surgery which was conducted following two false negative biopsies. We are swallowing our pride in an attempt to alleviate some of the fiscal burden that shrouds our future. If my wife does survive this, her future shouldn't involve the cumbersome ball and chain that a medical debt would bring.
THE DETAILS
At just 24 and 20, My wife and I already had an unexampled, story which we thought was fit for a disney fairytale. As it turns out, it may be better suited as a shakesphearian tradgedy with a beautiful body followed by a swift catestrophic ending.
My wife and I met in China and lived together there for two years. She gave up her lifes plans to stay by my side in a strange country and I reciprocated her two year commitment and love by bringing her to America to be my wife. I used the money I saved during my three year time working overseas to set up our life and pay for her legal immigration costs. (a very expensive endevor). I got us a car, a flat, and was going to start putting her through college. We got married in February of 2016. On my birthday, April 10th her body abruptly shut down. She couldn't breath, and was having problems maintianing conciousness. I took her to the ER and on that day we found out she had a large mass in her Posterior mediastinum which was causing plurisy and cutting off blood supply to her brain. After two biopsys proved benign (one traditional and one surgical) they decided it was safe to do open heart on her to cut out the mass which they believed to be an enlarged thymus. After cutting out 50% of the tumor, the on site oncologist did a disection of the mass and realized to their horror that the tumor wasn't benign at all, It was lymphoma (Cancer). They immediately bailed out, leaving the remaining 50% attached to her pulminary artery and left lung. The cancer may or may not have been spread by that open heart surgery.
She starts Chemo on May 25th and will be fighting through a chemo regimine for the next half a year. After that she will undergo targeted radiation to the area between her heart and left lung.
The problem with all this is that we hadn't been in the US for very long, and most of our china earnings were eaten up by the immigration and resettlement process. We also have terrible insurance, which seemed logical at the since we appeared to be so young and healthy. It didn't make sense to get top coverage. Miraculously I did have some insurance through my company which I picked up JUST before this incident started! Since it happened so fast however, I am already facing nightmarish claims issues (partially because her immigration scans in slovakia show that she had a mass, but the slovak doctors never reported it). nevertheless since the mass is present it opens us up for debate. Even if I win those battles, it only covers 70% in the end.
Our new life in America shouldn't start with crippling medical debt or stress about weather or not we have any future. That isn't the American dream I intended for her. I was going to put her through school and buy her a vehicle and she was going to work hard and fight the world by my side. Now instead we are fighting cancer & hospitals all our days. Its quite a lonely battle at the moment as we are pretty isolated in our area.
The Fiscal Breakdown:
Honestly I have no idea what all of this is going to cost in the end. I know that 30% is our burden to bear, and 30% of Chemo, open heart, 2 biopsies, radiation, anesthesia, and countless days of inpatient stay, all amounts to a fiscally crippling sum of money. We have come to accept the fact that we will likely be battling with the medical expenses for a while. There is no way to avoid this fate. What I would like help with however is the cost of other things. It can cost as much as 10-12,000 just to freeze an embryo to ensure that we can have children. 500-$800 a year for preservation fees, 5000 for thawing and re-implanting. even a decent wig will probably be expensive. There is the cost of plane tickets for bringing her mother to the country, (which is imperative cause it might be their most critical time together).
I WANT MY WIFE TO MAINTAIN HER HOPE, I WANT HER TO REMEMBER OUR DREAMS AND NOT GIVE UP IN THE FACE OF DAUNTING ODDS OR CRUSHING DEBT. I WANT HER TO FEEL LOVE, NOT JUST MINE BUT THE LOVE OF ALL THE WORLD. I WANT HER TO KNOW THAT PEOPLE CARE, THAT SHE IS NOT ALONE, THAT THERE IS A REASON TO KEEP FIGHTING AND THAT SHE HAS A FUTURE WORTH FIGHTING FOR.
HOW WE MET (Long, amazing story made short)
I met her in China. I was fresh out of college working my first white collar job in product sourcing. She was just passing through Asia doing modeling jobs. We met in the streets of shanghai. One of the male models had gotten lost in China, I was walking by a venue on my day off and was approached by a stressed manager. I agreed to fill in for the lost model, it appeared to be an interesting way to spend my day off. I met my wife that day on the runway of a production in downtown Shanghai, the most populated city in the world. She was abused by her agency/handlers in China shortly thereafter and I came to fight them and rescue her. I brought her to stay with me for a while and became her temporary manager and chinese language teacher. Eventually we managed to get her rogue solo jobs and life started to get comfortable. We slowly fell in love while we worked to get her a ticket home. She decided to give up her life plan and her home to stay with me in China. That also proved difficult, as her visas in china required a lot of red tape and necessitated that we travel all over asia every few months to migrate in from a different country each visa period. Eventually we grew tired of fighting red tape, spending our lives traveling internationally and spending all our hard earned money getting visas just to be together in a country neither of us called home. Rather than give up on us, I brought her to America and married her. Within a few months of our marriage, on my birthday, she had been admited to the ER for what would later turn out to be cancer. We fought so hard to be together and we aren't going to lose everything now! She will find a way to survive for us and I am trying to make sure that when she does we still have a future worth living for!
MY REQUEST IS THAT YOU HELP ME GIVE HER A REASON TO FIGHT. By either alleviating the burden of some of our medical debt, or simply ensuring we have a chance at building a family someday.
If you donate anything at all, contact me/us we will likely reach out to you personally. We are alone in this, and our gratitude extends well beyond the numbers associated with your donation. Your simple interest in our life gives us as much of a reason to fight as a couple pieces of paper can. This event taught us life is never about money, its about love. money is just a vessel for the love of those who are distant.
Organizer
Elliott Wheat
Organizer
Nashville, TN