Help us help David Zent

After hearing my friend David Zent's heart wrenching story of his trials and tribulations with throat cancer and after speaking with many of his theatre protégés we all felt we wanted to give something back to a man who has given us so much! I'm not certain how far this campaign will go but I pray it goes far beyond its tiny goal.
The following is David's own words.

As you may know, I haven't posted for quite some time on Facebook. Although I have kept the reasons fairly private, a good friend has convinced me I owe it to my other friends to explain myself this particular time. So here it is, with very little sugarcoating.

I have stage four throat cancer, involving the tonsil and tongue area, a condition which began nearly two years ago. It reached this rather dire stage because, although I applied FIVE TIMES for Medi-Cal insurance, I was essentially stonewalled until September of this year.

At one point, I was charged nearly $2000 when I saw an emergency room physician for five minutes after a wait of seven hours. He completely misdiagnosed the problem, telling me I had chronic pharyngitis, and then sent me to get a test for which the Medi-Cal authorization never arrived. My current doctor sent me to get a petscan May of 2014, and again, I never received authorization, so here we are.

I have a lot to say about the woefully inadequate administration of this system, but it barely matters at this point. I had no health insurance, or even regular income, these last couple of years, as I had decided to look after my mom in her illness, who of course could only offer me a place to sleep and enough to eat, because her cancer treatment was very expensive.

The entire run of her illness was unspeakably stressful, especially the last several months of her life. I took her to the emergency rooms countless times, usually in the middle of the night, and to most of the many weekly visits to her doctors and chemo treatments.

She did not die of cancer, btw, but from a kidney infection that went untreated by her doctors until it was out of control. They then prescribed a medicine that put her into anaphylactic shock (this happened three times that I can think of) and that was the tailspin from which she never recovered. She suffered countless indignities. I can still barely talk about what she went through without crying. But I do have the knowledge in my heart that I was there to advocate for her and it mattered that I was.

Now my life is about to change in a most radical way. The tumor sits on a junction feeding my cranial nerves, and without continuous OTC painkillers I can barely function, as the effect is like someone driving metal skewers into my head. Since I can no longer keep the pain at arms length with those, the doc has put me on stronger meds beginning today.

I can barely talk or eat at this point, because the pain from doing so stays with me hours at a time, painkillers or not. This Thursday the surgeon will remove all my teeth, because this kind of cancer does not heal well from the radiation when there are any dental issues, which I have since cracking a few teeth in a bike accident.

He will also surgically attach a feeding tube because I will not be able to swallow for quite some time. Then we start radiation and chemo. Radiation makes the teeth even more brittle, so, adios teeth. That is pretty much the long and short of it.

I want to thank all the people out there it has been my privilege to work in theatre and music with, to know socially, to have been close friends with, to have loved. In fact, I have loved you all in my own way. Even adversaries have given me many welcome life lessons, and made me a better person.

So my life and heart are full because of you all, and I am in your debt eternally. I just didn't want anyone fussing over this, and so had limited my communication in a way I thought necessary.

Nevertheless, as always, I welcome your prayers and good wishes, because I am a spiritual person who knows that every good thing comes ultimately from our Creator. If I can recover from this, the remainder of my life will be spent trying to make some contribution to our collective happiness, and I am grateful beyond words that we have been friends. I do love you.