Hi- I’m Mike Fitzpatrick, age 72. I’m retired from industrial piping construction, and from playing the drums in honky tonk bands.

8 months ago i was given a diagnosis of small cell lung cancer after experiencing shortness of breath. It came about very suddenly, even though I smoked cigarettes for 50 years.

I was admitted to the hospital directly from the ER. I remained there for four weeks and underwent test after test, many unpleasant.

Unexpected benefits from the hospital stay included the discovery and surgical correction of an extremely dangerous Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) without incident. I also took off some weight and quit smoking in the bargain. My caregivers were compassionate and kind, but I’m sure I was quite a handful.

God kept a steady hand on me throughout the whole experience. I learned a lot about humility, gratitude, and the general good will of my fellow human beings. I never feared or gave up hope, in itself a superhuman response to grave illness. I pretended to myself that I had no more than an unusual and complicated touch of flu.

God is good and does great things out of love for his creatures… “for God so loved the world.” Most of the time in my life I have been too busy bellyaching to notice. Somewhere I read: “So near to us, so utterly distant.”

Also it’s impossible to believe that all the great and unselfish people who took care of me were there by accident.

After 8 months of chemo, radiation, and immunotherapy treatments, I was scheduled for a PET scan 90 days hence to assess progress. The results were amazing. My doctors confirmed that I am in remission … after only 8 months. Incidentally, another blessing emerged from the hospital stay: various secondary tests revealed that my basic underlying health is exceptional for a man my age.

Therefore, not only was I pulled out of harms way, but am returning to normal life in sound physical condition. 

I have arrived at a turning point. I decided to make this appeal because remission is going to be very expensive. We only have our Social Security retirement benefits for income now, and it will be awhile before I am well enough to look for a job. Anyway I can’t drive until I am more stable. 

Generally speaking our cost of living has gone up, without any commensurate increase in income or other resources.

We need help getting our lives back in order. Although we have been gifted with miraculous protection we still have to pay the bills. Health Insurance paid the majority of my hospital bill, however leaving a considerable co-pay that remains to be dealt with.

Thank God for my beautiful wife of 35 years. She never showed fear in all the time of our struggle.

Now we are hoping for another miracle. Any donation will be rewarded with our sincerest gratitude, and quite possibly with other unexpected gifts from who knows where? That seems to be how God works. Good karma: it goes around and comes around.

We hope to raise $10,000. That sounds like a lot but we have lost some serious momentum in every day life, and I am still not well enough to make it back on my own.

Think about this… God graces us with our every need. Gratitude is the only appropriate response. Be satisfied and joyful. Grace and Gratitude go hand in hand, an endless circuit of love and mercy.

God is always present Give thanks. Always be alert for an opportunity to pay back. God bless.

Thanks!