Will You Beat The Odds?

My dad was sick. Very sick. Several years ago, he had been diagnosed with cancer.

We had left yet another appointment with a doctor and I was taking him home.

While quietly driving on a winding country road, we passed a large tobacco field. My father looked out the passenger window and suddenly screamed, "I wish it could all go to hell!"

Dad had been a smoker. He had quit well over twenty years ago, but the damage had been done. He now had difficulty breathing and had been using an oxygen machine for eight years.

No longer able to work, my father struggled to do the things you and I take for granted, such as getting out of a chair or going to the bathroom.

What frustrated him the most was not being able to play with his grandchildren.

Eventually, he could not make it up the stairs to his bedroom, so he slept downstairs on the den couch. Before too long, they replaced the couch with a hospital bed. A Hospice nurse was there now too.

One day Mom was in the kitchen. All of a sudden, she heard Dad gasping for air.

She ran into the den and saw him staring at the ceiling. She yelled, "Breathe, Paul! Breathe!"

The next thing she knew, my dad was gone.

Early that evening, I received a phone call from my mother. "I guess you know why I'm calling."

"Why?" I replied, though I already knew the answer.

"Your father has passed away."

After I saw what happened to my dad, who suffered for eight miserable years, I thought to myself, "I don't want to end up like that."

Does that sound like you? Have you ever thought that too?

P.S. After my father died, my mother was left with next to nothing.

I later found out medical bills is the number one reason Americans file for bankruptcy.

Most of the people sent into debt by illness are middle-class workers who are well-educated homeowners. Their health insurance offered little protection.

How about you? Can you afford to be sick?