Thursday, May 04, 2006

Couple things

I thought this article in the New Yorker was really interesting - great for learning some history about my church as well as understanding the current issues.

Please pray for Nick. He is in my husband's doctoral program - one of 3 or 4 students that were admitted with him four years ago. Needless to say, they all get pretty close. Nick is about our age and has been diagnosed with cancer on his throat. He's pretty much lost his ability to talk (not great for a professor). They had planned surgery with possibly chemotherapy. Then his eye started twitching, and the doctors think the cancer may also be in his brain. That complicates things enormously.

In addition to all this, Nick's a single guy far from his parents who has only the free health insurance offered by the university to its PhD students. Because he & J's funding runs out this June, they both lose the insurance. Not too huge for us, but pretty bad for Nick. The first surgery for his throat was probably going to hit the cap of $200,000 that the insurance would cover anyway.

And all of this as the guy is in the exact same situation as my husband: just finishing four years of working on a PhD, looking for a job, finally ready to start teaching and really get out there with what he's so passionate about. It's incredibly sad. I can't imagine what he is going through.

Please pray for him. Do you think we should do some kind of fundraiser for him?

God, what if he doesn't make it?

It's scary.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Last year Academic Coach did a fundraiser for a professor whose husband was dying of cancer. I think she had contributions go through paypal, but I'm not certain. WHy don't you ask her? You can link to her from my blog, giovannamaria.typepad.com