The post I’d hoped I’d never have to write

As many of you know, my oldest son, Satchel, had a rare form of brain cancer, which — thank god — he’s had successfully treated. He’s fine, though he has to take a regimen of medicine every day to replace pituitary function, having lost his pituitary gland during the surgery.

What many of you don’t know is this: at around the time my son was recovering and was in and out of Children’s Hospital here in Colorado, my wife — who’d been a senior VP of sales for a NY company (she’d worked remotely and would fly in on visits bi-weekly) — lost her job, we think in part because of the time we had to dedicate to our son’s medical issues.

She was able to find a new job in a few months at the VP level, but the new position — because of her need to work remotely so we could continue to take care of Satchel’s medical needs and be close to his hospital (where the world’s foremost expert on his cancer works from) — paid about half of what she’d been making.

For over two years we’ve managed to hang in there financially, having had to absorb about $36K per year in out of pocket medical expenses. Both of our boys have to be taken to and from school daily, so my work was limited to doing some online sales work and bringing in extra money any way I could.

But now it seems we’ve reached the point where we can no longer go on. The medical debt mounted, and unfortunately, we’re going to fail. Finally. Though not for lack of doing all we could to stay afloat.

Our house is such that it will take a while to sell if we hope to get market value and not lose money on it. I can sell my car, but I’m not sure I can make back on it what it’s valued at right now — and anyway, I need it to shuttle the kids back and forth to school.

We had hoped we could hold out until Satchel graduated high school. He loves the school, where he’s enrolled in an IB program, as well as a career certification program. He wanted to go to the Air Force Academy, but it remains to be seen if his medical condition will allow for that.

Regardless, we really didn’t want him to have to switch schools in high school; he’s already been through enough. But at this point, we just no longer see a way out.

Bottom line is this: we need to somehow get out from under our medical debt, which we put on credit cards mostly, so that we’re able to wait out the sale of our house and not have to declare bankruptcy.

This site of course doesn’t have the readership it once did, as many of my former readers have moved on to new places and new things. But if my long-time readers and friends can possible help us out and would ever be inclined to do so, I ask that you please do so now — and pass the word along to others you think might be able to help.

My paypal address is [email protected]. I’m loath to post this to Twitter, because I’ll have to endure the cesspool of hate that comes along with that grotesquery of a site, but I’ll do so at some point here soon and just bite the bullet.

We need somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-$40K to pay off those medical bills and stabilize. Ironically, my wife is about to get a raise; but it will be too little, too late, unless we can stop the current hemorrhaging.

Thanks to all of you who can help.