St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — This will be the St. Louis firefighter’s last round of chemotherapy.
Bob Abell is at Barnes-Jewish Hospital now and doing five days of chemo. For Abell, a firefighter for 24 years, each round of treatment was less about stalling death than just getting a little more time to spend with his wife.
But he’s stopping the rounds now. Cancer is “so super expensive,” said Abell, 53, on Tuesday from his hospital bed.
“I don’t want to leave my widow with a debt,” he said.
Family and friends made a GoFundMe account for his expenses — $4,400 of a $15,000 goal has been raised since he was diagnosed with CNS lymphoma, brain cancer, in April. He got some help from his co-workers at the St. Louis Fire Department. He said he has applied for disability benefits and is now on sick leave.
But another expense was thrown his way when his wife, Tina, walked out of their house last week to find their only vehicle stolen.
Who would want to steal a 16-year-old Chevy Silverado? Abell wondered. The couple didn’t have coverage for theft.
Now, Tina Abell is paying for a rental car to visit him in the hospital. The two of them are waiting until he gets out of the hospital before buying a car, an expense that will go in the stack with all those their health insurance won’t cover.
“It’s just like stacking weights on top of you, is basically what it is,” Bob Abell said.
Abell has spent his life as a sailor in the U.S. Navy, renovating St. Louis housing complexes, raising a family and fighting fires and floods with the St. Louis Fire Department, where he was a rescue diver during the Great Flood of ’93.
Doctors have now given that life an estimated end point: Abell was told he had anywhere from 18 months to three years to live.
Ask him how it has been for him, dealing with cancer, and he’ll more likely talk about two other things: how much he misses his job — “I didn’t want to do another job ever again” — and his wife.
“Dying is not that hard,” he said. “But losing someone you love ... that’s hard.”
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