Having Insurance Makes A Serious Illness Easier To Deal With

I work for an engineering firm in Florida, my wife is a teacher, and we have two children. We are a close family and we have always enjoyed family outings. We usually take our yearly vacations during the summer when my wife is home with the kids.

Four years ago when our kids were in middle school, we were on one of our outings, and our younger child, our boy, started feeling a little ill and feverish. We ended our adventure early, went home, and put our son to bed. The next morning he was still sick and my wife called the pediatrician. She got an appointment for him for later in the day. The doctor checked out my son, gave a diagnosis of the flu, prescribed some medicine and sent my wife and son home. My son started feeling better, and after a few days, he went back to school.

Everything was OK for a while, and as usual we went on outings and took our annual vacations and generally just had a lot of fun together. Our son still got sick now and then, but after a trip to the doctor's office and some medicine, he always got better. But one summer he got sick again while we were on vacation, and we went to the emergency room. The doctor decided to monitor him over night and met with us the next morning. He said there were some tests he wanted to run. The rest of our vacation was spent in the hospital next to our boy. At the end of the week they released him, and he was OK enough for the long drive home. The test results weren't due until next week, and the doctor said he would call us as soon as he got them.

Our child was still a little sick when we got home on Sunday. I had to go back to work on Monday, but, fortunately, my wife would be staying home with our kids. On Tuesday the doctor called my wife with the test results, and she called me at work right away to tell me the results. The diagnosis was leukemia. My wife called our children's pediatrician immediately, and we told us the name of a specialist. The specialist started chemo and radiation therapy right away. The treatment seemed to take forever, but it only took a couple of months from start to finish, but it wasn't enough. If my son were to survive this disease, he would need a bone marrow transplant. We all got tested to see if any of us could be a donor, and it turned out our daughter was a match for him. The transplant was a success!

This crisis happened three years ago. Since the transplant our son has been cancer free. He is a high school student now and has set his sights on college. During my son's entire illness, my insurance company covered every hospital and doctor bill as well as the cost of every drug and medication. Our only out-of-pocket expense was the co-payments. Many people don't have health insurance. If we were one of them, this ordeal could have had devastating effects for us.