Cancer Bill Relief

My name is Jim Rychel and we need a little help. In September I started feeling like I had the flu and spoke with my primary physician NP Matt Saxsma from Redefine Healthcare who I had just recently moved to because my original physician just didn't do a very good job of being my doctor. Matt said we needed to keep an eye on it and let it run it's course. It persisted for a few weeks until I started to urinate blood. At first we thought it might have been a simple kidney stone but a few days later I started urinating blood clots so he decided a CT scan was necessary. We had the CT done and then later that day Matt personally came to the house to break the devastating news. In October of 2018 I was diagnosed with Renal Cell Carcinoma on my right kidney. The tumor they said was the size of a football and had encased my entire right kidney. The photo here shows the tumor and the very tip of my right kidney is visible on the left side.  The specialists here locally in Illinois told us that there wasn't anything they could do and that I had less than a year to live. I am 54 years old and have been married to my beautiful wife Becky for 5 years. Not near long enough for me to leave her this soon. We decided to get a second opinion and went to Barnes Jewish Hospital's Siteman Cancer Institute, in St. Louis Missouri (about 2.5 hours from home) on December 4th, 2018 to meet with Dr. Eric Hwan Kim who is a Urology Surgeon there. He looked at our CT scan and said we need to do surgery and get it out so you need to stay right here so we can do surgery in a day or two. He refused to tell me if he could save me or not at that time. On December 7th I endured a 6 hour surgery to remove the tumor. We stayed in the hospital for a week and came home the Thursday following the surgery. Upon our arrival at home the phone rang and Dr. Kim informed us the pathology showed he had gotten all of the cancer and the margins were clean. We had received a miracle and were on top of the world. Dr. Kim referred us to an Oncologist at Barnes who we met with a few weeks later. He had lab work and another CT done so that we could qualify for a blind study for patients who had been diagnosed with terminal Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma and had the entire cancer removed by a full surgical removal (nephrectomy) and were now cancer free. A few days later we got the call we did not want to receive from the Dr. informing us that the cancer had returned, this time on the lungs. This meant that I did not qualify for the study and would have to receive immunotherapy/chemo for the new cancer. These treatments are extremely costly (shy of $20,000 per treatment) and are required every 2-3 weeks, on top of the continuous CT/MRI/Labs that have to be done in between every treatment. I am very fortunate that my employer provided health care is great and has paid the largest portion of the medical bills, however the copays for office visits, treatments, and prescriptions for all of the meds required to combat the various side effects, along with the cost of travel each and every time add up and have overwhelmed us. My pride has kept me from asking for help until today and I just have to ask. We have no idea how long we will have to continue with various treatments and visits but anything will help. Thank you very much for taking the time to read our story and for any help you can give.

Jim and Becky Rychel