Young Father Battling Leukemia

By Rivky Spivak

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that no one wants to have to publicly reach out to friends, family, and strangers to ask for help. It’s hard, and it’s frightening, and most of us would do anything to avoid it, but sometimes we have no other choice. This fundraiser is on behalf of my husband David–who is battling leukemia–and our family, who have fallen on incredibly hard times, and can no longer get by on our own.

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On January 1, 2015, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Elijah, which was a miracle in its own right. Five hours after Elijah came into this world, he stopped breathing and spent two weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. He recovered, but I’ve never seen my husband so frightened before– nor since– not even the following year, when he was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.

Imagine being a newlywed and a brand new father, your heart full, and your head buzzing with plans for the future, and then your doctor tells you—just weeks before your son’s second birthday—that you have cancer. It’s rare for someone as young as David to have this kind of Leukemia. There are fewer than 200,000 cases per year in the US and most are in people 60-years-old and up, but there are always exceptions, and David is one of them. The doctors suspect that David has had CLL for some time, unbeknownst to him, so by the time he was diagnosed he was already very symptomatic.

Since getting sick, David is weak, and until he can begin the treatment he desperately needs, he is unable to put his energy into work. Right now, we don’t know how we’ll continue to pay for daycare, and David is too weak to watch Elijah during the day. If I cannot continue to work, we will be in danger of losing our home on top of everything. With Elijah being 2 1/2 years old, pre-school is costly, not to mention the avalanche of expenses that come with being ill. I am trying; WE are trying, but with David unable to work at the moment, we have fallen behind on bills and living expenses.

We are everything to David and his son means the world to him. He is one of the strongest people I know, and steadfastly determined to beat this cancer and watch his son grow up, to hear the words “I love you, daddy”, to be there when Elijah attends his first days of school, but his cancer is progressing, and he and we need help.

Today, I’m asking you to make the world a better place for a family you may or may not know. I understand why you may hesitate, but all I can say is that your support will literally help to keep a young family afloat, a child with a roof over his head, and my husband and our family with hope for a future. It would mean everything to us and to me. Thank you so much for reading and for any support that you can provide.

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