Help a local Seattle man pay for Cancer Treatment
Hello everyone, thank you so much for taking the time to read our story. My name is Rocco Conte, I'm 20 years old and have lived in the Northern Seattle area my whole life. Growing up I always looked up to my dad, to this day he remains my role model. I couldn't ask for a better father. He’s the hardest working man I know and has remained my biggest support throughout my life. He's there for me no matter what, if its advice about car's (we’re both huge car people), career advice, or just sharing what he's learned in life, he's the first one I ask.
My dad's been a mechanic his whole life and that's been a huge influence on me. My dream is to follow in my fathers footsteps. Not only as a mechanic but as a friend and a family figure. He always goes out of his way to help his friends, family, or anyone that he can. Words cannot describe how grateful and lucky I am to have him as my father.
Unfortunately about a year and a half ago my father, Gil Conte was diagnosed with stage four bladder cancer at the exact time that the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the world. Right after the diagnoses the doctors laid out a roadmap to recovery for him and wasted no time in getting him on the way to recovery. Almost immediately he went in for surgery to get a tumor removed from his bladder. The surgery was successful, and a "strawberry" sized tumor was removed. After the surgery Gil was supposed to go in for weekly chemo-therapy treatments, if you know about cancer you understand how brutal this can be. During the treatments he got periodic scans to check on his progress and the doctors at first believed Gil was getting better -that everything was going according to plan. Unfortunately after the scans were sent to a caner council they decided that Gil hadn't made enough progress and could no longer be a candidate for a replacement bladder (which would have greatly increased his likelihood of recovery). Since then we've had to experiment with different types of chemo to try and find one that worked better for him which has been an intense process. 
Luckily before all this started my dad bought cancer insurance from our work and that helped keep things a bit under control. During this whole situation my dad has not been able to work due to complications from the Chemo and from the cancer of course. I know It's been really hard for my dad. He's worked his whole life and having that taken from him by something you can’t even see is very hard. Today, September 7, 2021 we received a letter from my fathers insurance company notifying us that my fathers insurance was being cut off and terminated.
The new treatments my dad is on right now are extremely new and as a result are very expensive, costing thousands for EACH treatment which he goes in for multiple times a month at the UW Medical Center. So after all he has been through, his treatment has stopped and his condition remains in limbo. We don’t know if he’ll ever fully recover. There have been times where the doctors have told us that he may be on treatments forever which is very hard on him. So while we’re still trying to figure out our plan for the future, losing his insurance has held us up in trying to figure out our next steps for his recovery. The money raised for this will be going towards medical bills from treatments and other possible solutions to this terrible situation. Thank you for your time and listening to our story.