A father in Texas was diagnosed with cancer. His six year old son decided to raise some money to help pay for his father’s medical bills. He opened a lemonade stand. Amazingly, he managed to raise more than $10,000 in one day. The little boy turned lemons into lemonade, and lemonade into money.
Randy Cox lives in Gladewater, Texas, with his wife, Tonya Cooley Cox. They have three sons: Drew is six years old, Jake is four years old, and Micah is only seven months old. Randy, who is 30 years old, was recently diagnosed with seminoma.
Seminoma is a type of testicular cancer. According to WebMD, it is a type of testicular cancer that is made up of a single type of cell. Seminomas tend to be slow growing and occur most often when men are in there 40’s and 50’s. The type of seminoma that Randy Cox has is non-testicular. This means that he has tumors appearing in his chest and in other parts of his body. This is a condition that can be treated with chemotherapy.
Luckily, Randy Cox has medical insurance. People who are uninsured, and who are diagnosed with cancer, end up struggling to find some way to pay all of their medical bills on their own. They often end up filing for bankruptcy. The problem is that, despite being insured, Randy Cox will still have to pay thousands of dollars in medical costs out of his own pocket. This is a common situation with cancer patients.
A study done by Duke University Medical Center and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that many cancer patients end up paying a lot of money out of their own pockets, despite having health insurance coverage.
The study involved 216 cancer patients, (many of whom were older women who had breast cancer). On average, the women were paying $712.00 a month on cancer related costs that their health insurance was not covering. 30% of the group said these expenses were a “significant burden”, and 11% said that it was a “catastrophic problem” for them.
Drew, Randy’s six year old son, decided to raise money to help pay for his father’s medical bills. Drew opened up a lemonade stand. He charged customers $0.25 a cup. Word spread, and Drew ended up raising more than $10,000. One person wrote a $5,000 check. That’s pretty amazing! A friend of the family is continuing to raise money through a website.
Image by Everett Mar on Flickr