Monica's Cancer Fund
Donation protected
In April of 2015, my beautiful wife of 30 years Monica Murphy was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Only a decade ago, women in the United States with this diagnosis had about an 11% survival rate. With the advances in modern cancer treatment and improved early detection the survival rate has been radically improved, but the fight is still a difficult one. She has just finished her fifth week of radiation and chemotherapy treatments, but those treatments have ravaged this amazing woman both physically and emotionally. We are now getting ready to enter the first "recovery" phase as she tries to regain her strength for several weeks before her surgery, which will be a radical esophagectomy. This is a very invasive surgery with significant hospital recovery time expected. We are hopeful that the surgery can be performed here on the Central Coast, but there is a good possibility she may have to go to either Stanford or UCLA because of her weakened condition.
I retired from the SLO Sheriff's Office in February of 2014, after a 26 year law enforcement career. I also served for 12 years on our local school board. Monica was a full-time wife and stay-home mom, and was the best I have ever seen at both of those jobs. She was also a long time school volunteer, and for the last several years she had also been the full-time caregiver for her elderly parents, until they moved into an assisted living facility in May of last year. Among the blessings of being retired is the fact that I have been able to devote pretty much all of my time and energy to helping Monica deal with her illness. However, the downside of being retired is that we are now on a fixed income, and between the two of us giving up the work we had previously been doing we lost approximately $50K in annual gross income as of last year. Even with our medical insurance, we have had thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs for medical expenses, in addition to fuel and travel expenses for the 100+ miles we were driving every day for her treatments, five days a week. In fact, we quickly met our "in network" out-of-pocket maximum deductible for our insurance policy. There have also been some medications that the insurance would not cover which we have had to pay for out of pocket. Her surgeon, widely considered to be the best cancer surgeon in the area, is also considered an "out of network" provider by the insurance company, and so the surgery itself will cost us several thousand dollars more out of pocket, and that assumes we don't have to go to Stanford or UCLA for the surgery, which could incur even more out of pocket costs. Most of these medical costs have gone on our credit card.
We could certainly use your help to cover the costs of Monica's continued treatment! As a way of saying "thank you" I have available a large number of Diamond level memberships to Front Sight Firearms Training Institute in Nevada, and for anyone who donates $100 or more I will happily send you one of those memberships until they are all gone.
Thank you!
Mike Murphy
I retired from the SLO Sheriff's Office in February of 2014, after a 26 year law enforcement career. I also served for 12 years on our local school board. Monica was a full-time wife and stay-home mom, and was the best I have ever seen at both of those jobs. She was also a long time school volunteer, and for the last several years she had also been the full-time caregiver for her elderly parents, until they moved into an assisted living facility in May of last year. Among the blessings of being retired is the fact that I have been able to devote pretty much all of my time and energy to helping Monica deal with her illness. However, the downside of being retired is that we are now on a fixed income, and between the two of us giving up the work we had previously been doing we lost approximately $50K in annual gross income as of last year. Even with our medical insurance, we have had thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs for medical expenses, in addition to fuel and travel expenses for the 100+ miles we were driving every day for her treatments, five days a week. In fact, we quickly met our "in network" out-of-pocket maximum deductible for our insurance policy. There have also been some medications that the insurance would not cover which we have had to pay for out of pocket. Her surgeon, widely considered to be the best cancer surgeon in the area, is also considered an "out of network" provider by the insurance company, and so the surgery itself will cost us several thousand dollars more out of pocket, and that assumes we don't have to go to Stanford or UCLA for the surgery, which could incur even more out of pocket costs. Most of these medical costs have gone on our credit card.
We could certainly use your help to cover the costs of Monica's continued treatment! As a way of saying "thank you" I have available a large number of Diamond level memberships to Front Sight Firearms Training Institute in Nevada, and for anyone who donates $100 or more I will happily send you one of those memberships until they are all gone.
Thank you!
Mike Murphy
Organizer
Michael Murphy
Organizer
Templeton, CA
