Most of you know about my son, Armand Pogue, who survived a brutal case of childhood cancer at age 2. We knew all along that late effects would come sometime between 12 and 30. Late effects aren't a recurrence of cancer, but they ARE a bunch of new problems as a result of both having had the cancer and the enormous amount of chemo required to treat it.

And with his latest physical at age 17, a LOT of them seem to be emerging at once (which we were also told would not be unusual.) Good news: Most of them are controllable. Some of them make no sense to the doctors looking at them (because Armand is a medical mystery), but we think they're controllable. But "controllable" comes with costs.

Having cancer late effects return with a vengeance is making absolute hell out of finances that we have only just barely recently gotten under control. We spent $100 in gas just going to doctor visits last week and have no reason to think that won't continue. (Chronic illness is INSANE; each day last week had multiple appointments and when we're not actually at appointments, one of us is on the phone about the next ones.) And some of these doctors are very specific specialists, because Armand's highly experimental form of chemo requires the pros to sometimes figure out new treatments on the fly.

Some of these specialists are already telling us we're going to be paying quite a bit, possibly some of it up front, because even after you hit your deductible, insurance doesn't cover EVERYTHING on these fronts. (I kind of hate the insurance system.) And Katrina had to put her job hunt on hold to handle this, because these appointments are a full-time job and will be for some months to come. Once again we are back in the world of learning to understand numbers and lab results we only learned even existed last week, and which are now a potential matter of life and death to understand, monitor, and manage.

And so, much as I hate to do so again, I must ask for a little help to somehow make it through this mess. The costs of the next few months are going to be wild and we would be grateful for anything that can help. Thank you so, so much.