I want to thank those of you who expressed..

I want to thank those of you who expressed sympathy and concern for my wife in response to our Christmas letter. Some of you have sent personal notes to her, others have written expressing concern that we have not investigated alternative methods of treating breast cancer. I have some concern about that too, but in the context of where we live, how quickly we believed we should act, my ignorance of cancer therapies both orthodox and alternative and thus my inability to judge them promptly, how much money we had access to, how we would cope with my Mother who is an invalid herself, and our nine-year-old being in school — we made what looked to us at the time to be the most sensible decision. I suppose time will tell.

Meanwhile, Irene is doing well, the prognosis is good, and she is in touch with a number of women in Visalia who have had cancer similar to hers and survived and are doing well themselves. It’s kind of interesting to listen in on some of the pow wows they have here at the house or by telephone. It’s like listening to old veterans, home from the front now, sitting around telling war stories, comforting each other and laughing at the same time and telling the most grizzly stories they know.

Contributions to the Project dropped sharply in January. It crossed my mind when I was writing the Christmas letter that I might be doing the wrong thing, that it would be bad for business, that I should choose something else to write about. It would be only natural for some of those who received the letter to wonder, with all that other stuff on my mind, whether I would be able to keep up with the Project, or whether I might not just get out of it for the time being until things are straightened out at home. There was no guarantee that contributions addressed to the Project would not be siphoned off to pay medical bills. While no one would think that criminal of me, at the same time most of my readers would consider my medical bills as one thing — we all have them — and contributions to the Project another. And as a matter of fact, how was I going to pay my medical bills?

I have never had never medical insurance. The first of last year, 1995, when I was maybe at the nadir of my financial life in Visalia, when I didn’t know which was I was going to turn, I began hearing a voice telling me to get medical insurance. I couldn’t hear the voice, it was more like I was aware of hearing it, and it kept reminding me I had to get medical insurance. I began to feel a small tide of anxiety building up in me. I didn’t have money to spend on insurance or on anything else and I was living off credit cards and going into debt very quickly. At the same time I was aware of hearing the voice tell me again and again to buy medical insurance and finally the anxiety became so intense I rang up a neighbor who is an insurance agent and we had lunch and he sold me a policy which I determined to pay for one way or another. It would cost $330 every two months for Irene, Magaly, and Paloma. I didn’t put myself on the policy because if something happens to me I’ll make my way to the veterans hospital in Fresno, an hour’s drive from where we live.

I bought the Blue Cross policy in February, it became effective in March, and Irene was diagnosed with cancer in July. The policy pays 80 percent of the total bills, which are maybe $15,000 now. We’re putting our own 20 percent of those costs on a credit card, which I’m paying on at so much a month.

I’m telling you all this, considerably more than you probably want to know, to reassure you that while I do have a special financial burden — like many of you have who receive this letter — it is not overwhelming the Project or distracting me so that I can not take care of it and take it out into the world. If you have hesitated in contributing because you were half afraid that your contribution would be sopped up by something other than the Project, I want to assure you that that is not happening.