It's Raining

Once we got a grip on the medical situation, I began trying to understand how we were going to handle our finances. What would insurance cover? How large will the bills be? For how long will we be incurring the additional cancer-related expenses? Do we have enough savings?

I found one blog where the woman outlined her expenses and I was relieved to find that it wasn't going to ruin us: her total was about $3500 for the first year. Our insurance coverage was no where near as good as her $1500 deductible--ours is $5000--so I'm sure our costs will be much higher, but it still shouldn't put us in so desperate a situation that the house is in jeopardy.

For our entire marriage we've handled our finances carefully (luckily for me, Sandra doesn't have expensive tastes!) and we've managed to save up a bit of a rainy-day fund to prepare for times like this. From time to time, I'm going to report on the financial impact cancer is having on us. Not because I'm looking for sympathy or charity, but because it was one question I found so difficult to have answered in the first few weeks. I was grateful to finally find someone who had posted that information and so I'm going to do the same, hoping that it can be just as helpful to someone else.

A few weeks ago I found that I needed to replace the 14 year-old Saturn, which we'd owned for eleven years because it needed about a thousand dollars worth of repairs. Then, yesterday Sandra called from the hospital and said they want $4000 of the deductible up front.

Wow, suddenly it's raining.