Well I'm glad that you decided not to quit. I was in somewhat in your position when I was diagnosed. I had recently made a move to another state to new job and had to drop my insurance carrier.

My new employer didn't offer health insurance so my wife and I went out and got health insurance for her and the kids but it was way to expensive to add me to the plan (very healthy then and not diagnosed with cancer yet) so I ended up just getting dental and life insurance and was looking for a catastrophic plan. Then got caught without health insurance when I was diagnosed.

We ended up working with the hospital's financial aid people. They turned us to our counties medicaid program who due to our financial need picked me up. We contacted the county, the county commissioners determined that we had financial need and they picked up our billing for a year. We have to pay that money back to them but it's an easy $25/month payment.

I applied to SSI and was approved the 1st time, but had to wait 5 months from the time of first application to get assistance. We kept applying to medicaid and were finally approved before I had to have my surgery in June.

I'm still on SSI and Medicaid, the biggest thing is to keep working with your hospitals people, your county's people, state people...trust me, people in these positions have hearts and will help you, just tell your story and express your need without getting frustrated at them. Now we did have hardly any income as I had to step away from my job and my wife had gotten laid off due to the economy and that helped us.

The paperwork is everything too, every agency complemented my wife on her paperwork being flawless and that it saved them soo much time.

My community really stepped up as well and has raised thousands of $ for me and my family as well. This money helped us pay our bills when neither of us had any income coming in, and supported us until my SSI finally came through in September (filed in Feb).

Hope that helps, also work with your local churches, the Lutheran church matched our local charity efforts up to $2500 dollar for dollar.

good luck to you, I know it's hard, I've been there and if you have any ?'s I can answer i would be very glad to help, just message me.

Eric