Be the Match Facts #1: Show Me the Money!

I'm starting out my posts on my Be the Match fundraising efforts with the basics. 

Where does the money go?

•$25 covers a clinic co-pay for a patient. Clinic co-pays can add up to $300 a month.

•$50 covers two days of meals for a patient and their caregiver during outpatient recovery. 

•$100 covers the cost to add one potential marrow donor to the Be The Match Registry.

•$500 provides two weeks of temporary housing during recovery. If patients live more than an hour away from the transplant center they are required to relocate and live nearby for the three to six months of recovery. Many families spend $800 to $1,500 a month on temporary housing, while also covering a mortgage back home. 

Why is this money important? 

The long and short of it is: cancer is a costly, costly disease to treat. I've read blogs where patients have been deciding which procedures they can afford to skip or which weeks they can risk getting infections so they can go to work and earn money.

Be the Match is such an important organization because it removes financial considerations as much as possible.

Neither the donors nor the recipients should have to worry that considering health is going to ruin their futures.

SO  if you've heard enough and can afford to contribute anything then please click HERE!! (It's a link I promise) and donate to my campaign

I'm a Details Person. Can you give me more info?

Just to put things in perspective, my family is extremely fortunate given the stability of my father's job and the federal health insurance he provides.

However, cancer treatment has still be an enormous drain on our resources. I think it would be for any family regardless of how much financial planning they had done or how many resources they had.

I thought it would help give people perspective by explaining what cancer treatment actually looks like even in a situation that is close to ideal. Family members flew in from all over the country to cook us meals and to care for my mother in the hospital. We also had relatively little financial stress because of our insurance. Still, the toll and commitment was enormous. 

A typical "cycle" of treatment:

* 4-5 days as an inpatient getting chemo. Obviously there's no work getting done here. My mother worked as a first grade teacher full-time for months even with migraines and no vision in her eyes, but the chemo made giving up her job a necessity.

* 7 days with a destroyed immune system and almost no energy. Even if my mother managed to avoid the fevers that come with neutropenia (lowered immunities because of chemo), she was in no shape to enter a first grade classroom or often get off the couch. 

Even family members have to
wear masks

Hospitalizations during this period of time varied for us, but I don't think they were ever less than 2 days. Symptoms varied from an annoying ear-ache to a potentially fatal ecoli infection. Ecoli is naturally carried in everyone's stomach, but my mother's mouth sores were so bad that they carried into her blood. This recovery period is serious business and no one should be considering if they can afford to skip work to check on the severity of a fever.

* Okay, so the bad weeks are over, right?  NOW there should finally be time to earn some money if a patient has been employed at a job flexible enough to permit such drastic sick days.

WRONG. This week is devoted to clinic visits: tests for neutropenia, infusions of blood and platelets if needed, consultations with doctors, and sometimes some out-patient chemo. 

My mom was usually asked to be in Richmond (1 hour away from our home) three times a week, but we could be lucky and get it down to two sometimes. We never knew if the visit would be the advertised length (about 3 hours in the hospital), a more standard period of time comprised of LOTS of tests and one or two infusions (8 hours in the hospital), or a surprise over-night check-in. My mom could not drive back home by herself because a lot of the treatment would make her drowsy, so this week required a second caregiver to take an uncertain amount of time off work to devote to cancer.

VCU infusion room

Even given this schedule we were not approved for disability because the powers that be said my MOTHER SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO WORK FULL-TIME this Spring!!!

So there's actually not a lot of financial assistance out there. Getting a bone marrow transplant is above and beyond this process and requires even more sacrifice and help.

If you can afford to help, please go to my page HERE!! (It's a link I promise) and donate what you can. Look forward to more information on this amazing organization in the future.