The support I have received over this, so far, has been overwhelming. Old friends offering to chip in, relatives offering to help out, even strangers just visibly caring has all been amazing.
I have been calling around here in the US to see if any clinics would be willing to press my case, but since I'm not a citizen/resident here yet, nobody has been willing. However, all the people I've talked to (bar one..) have been super helpful and caring. One woman has even called me back three times to offer me solutions, but all of them have ended in dead-ends. I'm not just sitting around however, I'm just perusing this while I arrange to fly back to the UK.
My Canadian uncle has graciously offered to help pay for my tickets, both mine and Megan's, so I can get back to the UK. If I cannot find anything here, and my hope for that has almost dried up, I will be flying back to the UK on Monday night to arrived 9:30AM Tuesday morning.
After that, who knows? I am going to try to contact my local UK hospital tomorrow and ask my options. The last thing I want is to wait around for a few weeks while this thing, whatever it is, festers away. I'm not sure if I need to see my local GP first, or go to a specialist, or go straight to the hospital with my US ultrasound results.
I also had another task to do today, get together everything to apply for another visa, so that one day I can come back. Will I never learn?
As I put together the list of things I need to fill in, I started writing my cover letter. I tried to explain everything that's happened so far, and I actually managed to type quite a lot. I'll paste it here, although the blog so far has covered almost everything. I apologise for the visa mumbo-jumbo, hopefully you can follow it:
Dear Sir or Madam:
My name is Aaron Demner, and I am writing to explain my I-130 application.
I met my now wife online in 2008, through a videogame we both played. We met several times before applying for a I-129f, a fiancée visa in August 2010. We went through the waiting period, we were approved, and I attended a medical and an interview in London in April 2011. I was approved, and booked my ticket for May 2011. My prior Alien Registration Number was #####.
I arrived safely, and we married on the 2nd of August, 2011, in a small ceremony in The Woodlands, Texas. I started to prepare the forms required for the Adjustment of Status, while my wife continued working. I organized it all, and we were waiting until she got one more paycheck so that we could safely fund the AOS.
Then one morning I noticed that one of my testicles was more firm than the other. I waited a few days to see and pray that it went away on its own. It did not.
I attended a urology clinic, and saw a Dr Don Berardinucci on Tuesday the 23rd Aug, 2011. He checked me and said he did not like what he felt. He arranged an ultrasound in a screening clinic nearby, I attended that afternoon. My wife has signed an automatic payment plan to pay for said ultrasound. The results were sent back to the doctor, but he was too busy to see me, and arranged an appointment for Thursday. However, after receiving the results, he called up and moved the appointment to the very next day, Wednesday the 24th Aug.
He was blunt. He told me he was 95% sure I had cancer of the right testicle. He told me surgery would be $3000, not including the scans afterwards, but he also informed me that certain hospitals might be able to offer certain programs to help me financially.
I am not insured, and neither is my wife. However, the UK offers free healthcare, and since it has not been 6 months since I left, I still qualify for that. I did not want to burden the US taxpayers by asking for a charity case, nor did I wish my wife to go into debt taking out medical loans on my behalf. Even getting a biopsy and finding out it is not cancer could still lead to expensive health complications.
I asked my Uncle to help finance my tickets, and I return to the UK to undertake immediate treatment on Monday the 29th. I attended an InfoPass appointment at the Greenpoint, TX USCIS office on the 25th Aug to ask for advice, and I was told since I had not applied for AOS yet, I could not get advanced parole to leave and re-enter the US, and that I would need to apply for a whole new visa, a I-130.
So here I am, applying once more. Please find attached copies of the ultrasound results, and also a copy of my wife’s payment plan to pay for it. I ask that you take my prior approved application into consideration, and know that as soon as all this is over I very much look forward to starting my new life together with my wife in the US.
Sincerely,
Aaron Demner
So, we'll see how that goes. Maybe after beating the cancer, I can change this into a visa blog until my life is finally moving forward!
As the electricity flickers on and off here, I think about how long the last few days have felt. I've spoken to a lot of people that I haven't spoken to in a long time. I've done some things that I wouldn't normally do. I don't want my life to go back to normal, I want it to be better than it was. As generic and cliche as it sounds, I think I'll have a new-found respect for life.
Scratch that. I think I already do.
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