Half a million dollars

 My oncologist started me on a new medication on Friday. It's a hormone blocker and if I tolerate it well, I will be on it a minimum of five years because my cancer was estrogen and progesterone receptive positive, meaning it feeds off hormones. I went to pick up my new medication from the pharmacy on Saturday, paid my $5 co-pay and noticed on the bag that it said my insurance had saved me $194.99. WOW!! $200 a month for one medication! That is a lot of money! That got me wondering how much my other medications run, so I started looking. $200 for one. $50 for another. One I can't tell until I refill it. Then I decided to look up the monthly Lupron injection I have to get. $1,060. $1,060!!! $1,060 a month so that I can then take my $200 an month prescription, but the injection gives me such severe migraines that I have to take another prescription that probably runs another couple hundred dollars (that's the one I don't have an exact figure on until I refill it). As these insane numbers swarmed before my eyes, I began to wonder why. Why me? Why was I so fortunate? Why did God decide that my life was worth saving? Before I went up to Stanford, when I was still having spasms, I called my insurance company and asked them how much they had paid out to date this year. Our plan has a two million dollar maximum per person and I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting close, because I didn't know if that was the maximum amount billed to the insurance or the maximum amount the insurance actually paid out. Thankfully, it was the amount they paid out, and I asked the customer service rep I was speaking to how much they had paid out in on my account this year. "Around $300,000" she said. $300,000. $300,000. And that was before a three day stay at Stanford's epilepsy center, before Botox treatments, before five years of monthly Lupron injections at $1,060 a pop, before monthly prescriptions at $200+/mth. We haven't yet received the bill for Stanford, the Botox treatments and my latest surgery at Memorial, but I would not be surprised if the insurance ends up paying out near half a million by the end of the year on my bills alone.

Our family sponsors a child in India. His name is Jit. According to the information we were given, the average family in his area lives on about $25 a month. In one year, our insurance company will have paid the equivalent of 20,000 months of living expenses for an entire family in India just to keep me alive and well! Somehow that doesn't seem quite right, and yet...Life isn't fair. Some are born to poverty and some are born to riches. Some are born healthy and some are born sick. Some are born into love and some are born into hurt and pain. I could turn down all future care, but it wouldn't help anyone else one iota. No one else would receive the care I would be turning down. I couldn't trade my life for the livelihood of 100 Indian families over 17 years. I can't trade my medical care for routine vaccinations needed around the world, BUT what I can do is realize the price that was paid for my life. Sometimes, we as Christians claim that we know a price was paid for our lives, but we don't live like it. If we truly believed that the very Son of God bought us with His own blood, we wouldn't live the way we do. I'm sorry but we wouldn't. If you really believed that you were worth that, if you believed that you had a price tag that said DIVINE BLOOD on it, you wouldn't sit on the couch and waste the gifts you were given like you do! You were given ONE life. ONE. What are you doing with it?? I will be honest with you. I was a hypocrite too. I wasted a lot of hours, a lot of opportunities and a lot of talent in my pre-cancer days, but I'm going to do everything within my power to make up for that now. Half a million dollars were paid in one year alone to keep me alive. Millions of people across the planet aren't so lucky. Since I've been given a second chance, I'm going to make the most of it. I don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but I want to make the most of every minute.

One small part of my effort to pay it forward includes collecting blankets to hand out to the homeless. Not only am I blessed to be alive and fighting my cancer, I am warm and dry during the process. Not everyone has that blessing, so I'd like to come alongside Church in the Park's efforts in Modesto and collect blankets to give to them to pass out in December. If you have blankets or funds you would like to donate to this, let me know. Thanks!