Help Me Stay With My Family A Little Longer

My name is Steve Rensch. I live in a cabin with my wife in the mountains of Arizona.

My life is not bad. I have six children and eleven grandchildren who keep things active and entertaining.

For the last 20 years (I am now 74), I have been fighting heart disease (6 heart attacks, open heart surgery, and heart failure). It has stopped me from doing some of the things I loved. But my head has remained clear, and I still have a hunger for learning and new things. And I still have the love of my family.

But a few months ago, I started feeling pain around my head and neck, and a bump behind my ear began to grow. Diagnosis took quite a while, but eventually the doctors determined that I have stage 4 cancer on that side of my face.

The doctors have informed me that I cannot have chemo because of the heart failure but that, if I don’t have some sort of treatment right away, I will be gone very soon. So that leaves only radiation therapy.

The expense of the therapy itself is not a problem because I have insurance. The problem is that the treatment, which is every day for seven weeks, takes place 150 miles from my home. Commuting is impossible, especially given that the doctors do not allow me to drive and that my strength will lessen during the therapy.

So, I can only make the therapy happen by renting a place near the hospital. Based on our research, getting a small place near the hospital for two months will cost about $6000. That’s where I need help since I don’t have that kind of money and have no resources to get it from.

So I’m asking you, my brothers and sisters, to help me raise that money.

At my age, death does not particularly scare me (although the pain I imagine on the way to the end does). But there is no way my family is OK with my death, and I owe them to stay here as long as possible.

My only way to stick around is by doing radiation therapy, and my only way to do the treatment is with your help.

Thank you.