My Fundraiser

I am so excited to be given the opportunity to do a fundraiser to assist with some of the costs of my treatment.  It will be at Chili's Restaurant off Crown Valley in Mission Viejo on January 12th from 4pm till close.  I am warning you all now, I will have a shaved head by then too, but don't worry I am gonna rock it ! Yesterday I noticed my hair shedding 10 times more than normal, and in the shower the same.  For my mental sanity, I decided I am going to shave my head before it falls out. For me, it is less traumatic, and it's one way I can have some control over this cancer.

As many of you know, Richie is in the military, so we have Tricare health insurance. They are truly amazing, and are covering nearly 100% of all my treatments.  We are truly blessed to have this insurance, because I have heard cancer treatment beginning to end can actually run upward of a million dollars.  Well, with any regular insurance, we would have (at the very minimum ) copays and/or a percentage we would be responsible for. With those kinds of figures, you can imagine even being responsible for 10% of a million is a huge amount.  The one thing Tricare does not cover was fertility treatment, which I was told I needed to do prior to starting chemotherapy.  I had to take hormones, and retrieve my eggs so they were waiting for me after treatment.  It was really hard to say if I would be able to get pregnant on my own after, so we decided this was something we wanted to do.  Once chemo starts, and it starts killing away various cells in my body, there was no turning back.  So we harvested my eggs, and we have 7 fertilized healthy little embryos to go back to once I get the "all clear" from my doctor.  Many of you probably haven't looked into this, god knows I hadn't before I was diagnosed. But fertility is like plastic surgery....... most insurances do NOT cover it (mostly because it's not medically necessary) and everything is to be paid in full up front.  LIVESTRONG offers a program that I qualified for that cuts the cost down, which does help tremendously, but the cost is still pretty high, totaling quite a few thousand dollars.  Because I am a nurse in the same building as my fertility doctor, and because the reason I went to see him and the time constraint we had to get started asap, he is allowing me to make payments (something his office really doesn't do).  We are doing this fundraiser to assist  with these costs, and saving some to supplement my paychecks a little since I am on disability through the end of my treatment.

So many people have already responded they are coming, and most of them are bringing friends and family with them too.  I am blown away at the kind of support I have received from everyone.  People that I see often, down to friends I haven't seen since I was little. Everyone has stepped up in a unique way, and all together it has provided me with so much strength that I feel like I can do anything, including beating this thing and moving forward with my life in a big way.  I have a little motto for my treatment, and even when I am having moments I am scared or sad, I allow myself to feel sad for a few minutes, but then tell myself this .....................................CALM DOWN, I'VE GOT THIS !!!!