My hospice & family support fund

Friends, we are reaching out to you to seek help for Rajesh Omtri, a post-doctoral fellow and his family. Rajesh was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, and he underwent a major surgery to remove the primary tumor followed by multiple rounds of chemotherapy. Unfortunately, the surgery was complicated by severe bleeding, and the chemotherapy failed to tackle the aggressive tumor. Now Rajesh is in the University of Minnesota hospitals, on end-of-life support. This came as a painful realization to his family, and many others in the University family, who remember Rajesh as a dear and trusted friend and a sincere colleague. It is even more disturbing to realize that his wife will be left with very limited means to support herself and two young children(7 years and 2 years old), during this devastating stage in their lives in addition to meeting Rajesh’s hospice care. Many of us, would only like to respond to reasonable requests and involve in worthy causes. So, please give us a minute of your valuable time to explain why this unfortunate turn in Rajesh’s life deserves your sympathetic consideration.

 Like many of us, Rajesh came to US harboring beautiful dreams in his heart and nothing much in his pocket. Rajesh, tenaciously conducted cutting edge research on developing methods for the early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. He contributed not only through his own original research, but also through the support he provided to the graduate students in university laboratory. His work was instrumental in the successful completion of two Ph.D. theses from the University of Minnesota. While working full time in college of pharmacy lab and taking care of his young family, he also pursued his part-time Ph.D. and successfully defended his thesis last year.

 Now Rajesh stands at the juncture where, in spite of his Herculean efforts, his family may not be able to reap the benefits of his contributions to the scientific community. While we are humanly limited in our help to Rajesh personally, I request you to consider helping his family to overcome their financial hardships, which I believe is possible through our generosity. You may take comfort in the fact that we have been closely working with his family and helping the best way we can to offset the immediate needs during this very difficult time. However, we now realize that a bigger pool of resources are necessary to effectively handle various daunting challenges facing Rajesh’s family in the near future. Therefore, we are writing to you to share the grief and request you personally and also on behalf of Rajesh’s family and friends to consider contributing in whatever way you can.