Help Miguel Cover Cancer Treatment and Living Costs!

Support Miguel - Covering Throat Cancer Treatments and Living Expenses this Spring!

Hello everyone,

Thank you for coming to help support our long-time dear friend Miguel through his throat cancer treatments and every living expenses. His diagnosis was confirmed in January and the daunting and quite invasive treatment process has already begun this week.

So, with Miguel's blessing, Laurie and I have created this month long fundraising campaign with the initial $1,500 (max allowed) goal set to get things going. We truly hope to blast past that goal in the coming weeks to ensure Miguel can focus on his treatments and recovery and not have to move out of his apartment due to the loss of income not being able to work for the coming weeks and months.

We want to get the funds to Miguel as soon as possible, so any amount you can afford is greatly appreciated. We will have more details about he's doing and the planned music singalong jam session event in late March as a gracious thank you to all who helped support Miguel.

If you have any questions or problems with the page, please let me (Daniel) know! Thank you!

With love & gratitude,

Miguel, Laurie & Daniel

Miguel's January 24th Facebook Post... We’ll let Miguel take it from here...

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately the cancer-negative result from a month ago has proven to be wrong. Last week I was diagnosed with throat cancer. Tomorrow I go for my first consultation for treatment that I will have to get started on very soon. Naturally I’m scared and overwhelmed with my life being completely overturned, and I’m not sure how I’m going to survive this, health-wise and financially.

I most-likely have lost my job (though I still need to find out more before I can say for sure), and the treatment expenses are way beyond what I can afford. The situation is daunting. Still, there’s nothing for it, but to grit my teeth, do the best as I can, and hopefully retain my sense of humor throughout. I’ve heard and read a number of reassurance that this is a relatively easy cancer to treat, so hopefully my luck holds out.

My partner Angela, and my family have been wonderful in supporting me and cheering me up when my confidence lags, and the laughter that they shared with me truly softens the weight of the fear and foreboding. I feel blessed for this. Even though Angela is far away in Malaysia and the Covid restrictions make it nigh impossible to meet, she’s been with me online everyday, and we’ve shared all the feelings about this. Though it’s daunting, we’re committed to making it through this together, as we’ve done all through last year, through the worst of the pandemic, when Malaysia was going through some truly terrifying times. We’ve got this!

Even then, I’m alone here, and my circumstances are bad. I need to figure out how to get over the financial chasm (I’ve already started looking for and implementing avenues the city offers), and for the possibility of losing my apartment and having to move to a much smaller, much cheaper place. I’m looking for a possible cheap or free space to temporarily store most of my belongings, so I don’t lose the tools for my work and for the outdoors, and for a place to temporarily live so I can ride out this storm.

Health wise I don’t know if I’ll be able to work, but hope that I can do online work to bring in at the very least some income to offset all the expenses. This is the financial tsunami so many people over the years warned me about, and I, like a fool, did not adequately prepare for it, though god did I try over the last three years. This is so enormous that all I can do is let go and let the waves carry me to wherever they are headed.

I’m absolutely awful at asking for help. I hate burdening others, and don’t like being out of control of my circumstances, or not being able to provide for myself. But in this case, I may have to swallow my pride and possibly ask for information on things like cancer support groups to join, or aid I might be eligible for (in Japan), or possible solutions in getting around, or finding a place to hole up for a while. I’m beginning to realize that I may need to rely on others in order survive this. It’s something I have to learn.

I’ll get through this. And I’ll be up in the mountains again.

It’s not the end of the world.