David’s Story

Site created on December 14, 2020

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting. If you are interested in donating to help David cover medical and rehab expenses, visit his GoFundMe page at https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-david-beat-this-tumor

Newest Update

Journal entry by Christine Olsen

It has been quite a while since we updated. Things have been quiet and David has continued to improve. To look at him, you would not think he has been through such an ordeal in the last 4 months. He's doing very well. Though he grumbles about feeling weak at times, he's comparing himself to the former 16-hour per day working farmer. His bar is set very high! But he can do so many of the things he loves again. He went for an 18-mile bike ride not long ago! And we just did several consecutive days of 7+ mile backcountry hikes!


But the big news is... David and Shiloh have finally been reunited! While David was in the hospital, his amazing former wife Sara drove from Colorado to pick up Shiloh and has been caring for him for the last 3 months. It was such an enormous relief for David to know that Shiloh was in good hands. We cannot thank Sara enough for this. Last week we finally made arrangements to drive out to Colorado to retrieve Shiloh (with some Utah sight-seeing on the way) and Shiloh was sooooo excited to see him. Getting Shiloh back to the farm feels like the final step of getting everything back where it belongs. At this moment, David and Shiloh are driving back to Oregon (I flew home yesterday). 


As far as his cancer goes, David is due for his first set of follow-up scans. With a couple changes of insurance and getting his care transferred to Oregon, the scans are a little delayed but they will happen in a few weeks. At this point David is being cared for by an endocrinologist who specializes in neuroendocrine tumors at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland. OHSU is the only facility in Oregon that can perform the scans he needs. Positive thinking tells us the scans and tests will not find anything new. But, this cancer can be very aggressive (and Roxanne certainly was!) so there is a chance something will be back. If it is, it will be detected early, giving David more choices for treatment than a repeat of what he already went through. We will update later in April once he gets results from the follow-up. 


The other exciting and somewhat shocking news has to do with finances. People don't talk about money much, but we certainly hear the stories of people getting cancer and going bankrupt. This was a huge fear for David (and still is, to be honest). We don't know what the future holds in terms of his ability to farm again (physically it is out of the question this season) and earn an income, but the initial shock of the bills from all of David's prior and continuing care was.... well, shocking! The California ordeal, including the ER in Oregon, the flight to San Francisco, and all the care he received there came to over $2 million. Nineteen days of care cost $2 million. And here is the shocking part.... his insurance actually worked. It covered everything! He had to pay his out-of-pocket max which wasn't small, but it was pennies compared to the total bill. I work in healthcare and was fully expecting months if not years of fighting to get things covered. I'm just astonished it worked the way it was supposed to. And I am so incredibly grateful. Going forward, so far, insurance continues to cooperate to keep David healthy without fight. 


Anyway, that's enough for now. Here are a few pictures from our trip to rescue the pup!

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