Joe Bear's Medical Fund

Everyone sometime in their life needs to lean on friends for a bit of help. I've never liked to think that I would come to this point, because of my pride, but it definitely has, and I am forced to ask for help as this is a difference in living and dying for me. I have fought the chronic illness, C.O.P.D. in every way possible, and now, it's a matter of the almighty dollar whether I can live on and keep doing what I HAVE been doing, helping others fight cancer, or dying!
I understand that many of you are pretty hard up at times and can't give like you would like to. It doesn't feel very good for me to ask anyone for help, either. But, the more I think about this, the more I realize that this isn't just about me. It's also about a whole lot of veterans from as far back as WWII through Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially we who served in Vietnam as back then, smoking was still considered “the bomb” (as they say today)!
There are a whole lot of veterans like me who grew up believing the commercial crap on TV and the movies of how good and how cool it was to smoke. There even was a commercial on the TV way back then that claimed that Lucky Stikes were good for your health! SERIOUS!!! At that time in history, nothing was ever realized about the truth on cigarette smoking! Everybody smoked! We would see Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne, and Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and so many more big deal celebrities smoking like chimneys in the movies and TV. We ALL thought it was cool. We all wanted to be like them! Even the Beatles began their careers smoking! And when we joined the military, we got smokes for free! “Fire 'em up if you got 'em!” was the orders back in the day. And then, people started getting cancer and other “unknown” diseases by the droves! And now today, after all the years that have gone by since they found out that smoking could and would kill you in many ways, people still do it! Insane! And COPD was born! No cure, except a lung transplant! Now a huge and successful procedure comes around, out of something that got it's start in controversy, Stem Cell Treatments. And with the genius of science finding other measures to gain stem cells for therapy other than how it all started, and even with positive results from all the medical journals, the VA refuses to pay for Stem Cell Treatments using the old concerns of them being “too controversial”! And we veterans say “BULL”! They just want to cut or skim expenses as bureaucrats tend to do. THEY don't suffer from COPD. So they could care less, as some people in the public seem the same way (as I'm finding out)! THEY don't watch others die from it as I and others have. They want to skim away at our contractual agreements with the government we all signed on the dotted line and gave our entire selves to the protection of our country come life or death! I've seen so many veterans in wheelchairs on oxygen WITH COPD that I will soon be on all the time, if I don't get these treatments. They shouldn't be there. I shouldn't have to watch my brothers die like I have. Nor should anyone anywhere, when there are treatments available.
But the truth is that my case will be used by VA physicians, who are also frustrated with the bureaucrat system that ties their hands down. They already did pulmonary tests on me to the degree of my COPD and will keep records. The next thing, is for me to get the treatments as soon as I can afford them. When I do, they will test me on a monthly basis to either prove, or disprove the reliability of this treatment that all the medical journals are approving of. My case and the cases of several others could make the difference on veterans getting these treatments whether they can afford them or not! And as veterans have more than paid their cost on the battlefield, they should get them! ALL OF THEM!