Cupcakes help pay for cancer treatment

PLANT CITY

Morgan is hot. And bored. And tired. It's a sweltering Saturday and she has been at this bake sale for more than an hour. While her parents set up tables and price brownies outside the YMCA, Morgan Pierce and her big sister sit at a picnic table coloring posters. Morgan is 6. She spent most of this year in hospitals, having her bone marrow tested, suffering through chemo. She has been home for only three weeks. "You better get out of the sun," says her mom, stroking Morgan's fuzzy blond head. Morgan wants to finish her poster first. "Cookies for kids with cancer," she writes in crooked letters. "Anything helps."

Morgan lives in the country, in a little house with a big yard. She loves deviled eggs and joke books and Hannah Montana. Her dad, Clint, 32, is an electrician. Her mom, Emily, 29, used to teach preschool.

A year ago, Morgan was on a field trip with her kindergarten class when her right hip started hurting. So her mom took her to the doctor, then the hospital.

On the day after Halloween she found out she has a rare cancer called neuroblastoma. It affects her adrenal glands and had spread into her bone marrow.

Doctors took a tumor from her stomach, the size of a kid's football. They told her parents she would need to have stem cells harvested.

For that procedure, they had to go to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

"We were worrying about keeping a roof over our heads as it was," says Clint. "I kept thinking, 'How are we ever going to get to New York?"'

And that was just the beginning.

• • •

The family's Aetna insurance paid 80 percent of the medical bills. That had always been enough.

But then the Pierces started getting bills for Morgan's hospital stays and surgeries, chemo and antibody injections, tests and treatments and all these prescriptions. Suddenly, the 20 percent they were responsible for was crushing them.

For one round of drugs, their co-pay was $4,800. For three days of antinausea medication, their portion was $400. Plus there were plane tickets to New York, $245 a week to stay in the Ronald McDonald House, and their $1,000 mortgage.

Within months, their debt was more than Emily made in a year. And since she had to quit working when Morgan got sick, they had lost her income entirely. They feared they would lose their home.

"At least we have insurance," Emily kept saying.

In the spring, she called the state insurance commission. Morgan needs at least two more years of treatment. Could the private company cancel her before then?

"They told me Aetna can drop us at any time, for any reason," Emily says.

They have been happy with Aetna, which has never discussed dropping Morgan. But everyone kept warning them it could happen. So, a few weeks later, Clint bought a second medical insurance policy, just in case.

Now the Pierces are paying for two policies — insurance eats half of Clint's pay — because they're afraid one might be canceled. They also worry that if they lose their insurance, nobody else will cover Morgan because she is so sick.

Some health care reform proposals would make it illegal for insurance companies to cancel people's policies at will. Some would ban private providers from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

If either of those changes becomes law, Morgan's parents wouldn't have to pay for that second policy. That would free up $800 for her care.

"I don't think our health care system is broken. It's insurance that's broken," Clint says, tugging on his John Deere ball cap. "It's not fair to the people who get up every day and put their boots on and go to work and pay their premiums, but still have to decide between paying their kid's medical bills or keeping their house."

• • •

It's hard, Clint says. And humbling. But they have had to accept help.

Friends and family made Morgan a trust fund. All those months she was in New York, people back in Florida were staging car shows and carnivals, holding yard sales and raffles and bake sales.

They raised enough money to pay the mortgage for a year.

"If it weren't for our community," Emily says, "we would have lost our home months ago."

"It's been amazing," Clint agrees. "But on the other hand, it's sad. You pay thousands and thousands of dollars for insurance, and you still can't afford treatment. No one should have to sell cupcakes to pay for their kid's cancer medicine."

That Saturday at the YMCA, bake sale profits were going for an even bigger cause. Since so many people had helped them, Emily and Clint wanted to help other families. They sent the $1,500 they raised to Sloan-Kettering for research toward a cure.

Lane DeGregory can be reached at degregory@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8825.

The series

The debate about health care has focused on the uninsured, but many Americans struggle even though they have coverage. This series is about what happens to people whose benefits run out or don't cover their bills.

This is the last of three stories.

On Sunday: Their insurance benefits exhausted, a stroke victim and his wife sign away their pension.

On Monday: A mother with eye disease risks blindness so her daughters can get care.

On the Web

"You don't want charity but you realize quickly that you have to swallow your pride," Clint Pierce says. The family tells their story on video at links.tampabay.com.

A public option

A fierce debate is expected today as members of the Senate Finance Committee take up a health care amendment that would create a government-run insurance plan. Story, 3A