The Ridgeback Group reposted this
Great hat and an even greater cause. Take a few minutes to read Maxwell Schmitz, MSFS, CLTC post today. This is one that's well worth your time and consideration.
The "Family Benefits" Guy | Collaborative insurance partner to help you think beyond your basic employee benefits | Co-Author of Questions and Answers on Disability Insurance Workbook
It's my birthday today. If you can, would you please consider giving $37 to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation? 🔗⬇️ Many of you know my mom's story. She and my dad built this little family-owned insurance agency that specializes in disability income. Well back in 2017, the unexpected started to take shape. She had a huge mass growing between her lungs and her spine (fortunately benign). It was eating away at her vertebrae and just a matter of time before it would eat through her spinal cord. It was also causing her to cough a lot. So they took it out and she had reconstructive surgery on her spine. We thought she would be out for a few weeks. But the coughing got worse. And fresh out of reconstructive surgery on her spine, that was extremely painful. They ran more tests to figure out what was wrong. Long story long, her lungs were dying due to something called "interstitial lung disease" which is a form of pulmonary fibrosis. There were many attempts to shrink, fight, and strangle this knotty fibroidal mass. Unfortunately, it was pretty clear the best doctors in the world (at UCSF) were out of answers and we were cruising toward a "managed care" scenario. By spring of 2020 she was down to about 30% lung capacity and just in time for a global respiratory pandemic. Yayyyyy... She was number 12 on the transplant list when that all started going down. Then she got the call. Just one lung, but a match. The people in front of her were either not a fit or elected not to undergo transplant surgery and rehabilitation while the world was working through a pandemic. But she had no choice. And as scary as that decision was, she was contacted to come in for surgery and then left me a voicemail--which I still have saved--saying "I got the call...[click]." It was tense and terse and chalk full of courage and fear and the entire spectrum in between. The surgery was successful. With a toddler and a baby (aka crawling, babbling germ factories) at the time I wasn't much help but my dad and my sister and a few neighbors were incredible caregivers for 2 months post-op. My main role was to keep the business afloat. And thankfully, with her disability insurance paying, we didn't have to find a creative and clandestine way to make her whole. We were able to keep that cash in the business. There's more from there, but you get the idea. We were a family business, probably like many of your clients, who needed a life-line and we fortunately had the proper planning in place. So for my birthday this year, I want to help move the needle, however slightly, toward supporting PFF in their mission to uncover more about interstitial lung disease and provide more resources to those who are met with the same questions and difficulties my mom faced. Thank you for reading if you made it this far. You're a real one and I appreciate you. 🙏🏻