Chris Holmes has posted a video update on the GoFundMe campaign funding his cancer treatment, and it is equal parts gratitude and a blunt account of what the past fortnight has been like.
The 68-year-old former W.A.S.P. guitarist, who has lived in Cannes with his wife Catherine since 2014, recently began chemotherapy in France for prostate cancer — four years after treatment for throat and neck cancer.
"I would like to thank everybody who's donated to my GoFundMe very, very, very much," Holmes said. "It's helped me. It's actually given me a prolonged lease on life, 'cause it's helped me through my cancer thing. I don't know what I would've done if I couldn't get the money to help me through this."
He then described the toll of the hormonal therapy he is on, in the unfiltered register he has always used. "The last two weeks I just went through probably one of the most sickest times I've ever been in my life. I thought the throat cancer was bad when on chemo, but something happened in my — not my stomach, my gizzards. I lost all the good and bad bacteria that's in there because of radiation." He described being unable to keep water down at all, and summed it up with a grim joke: "Dysentery would've been beautiful to have."
The financial situation behind the campaign comes down to an administrative error. Catherine explained on the GoFundMe page that because of a problem with their marriage registration, the French health insurance system placed Chris under "emergency only" coverage. He was made to wait three months before receiving any care, and only the radiotherapy delivered in July is covered. Everything else — hormone therapy, scans and PET scans, biopsies, blood tests, and the daily trips to and from hospital — falls to the couple, leaving them roughly €20,000 in medical debt with more accumulating monthly.
There is also no way to work around it. Holmes must stay in France for radiotherapy, and leaving the country would risk his emergency status lapsing, so he cannot travel and therefore cannot tour. "Chris has given everything to his music and to the people who listen to it," Catherine wrote. "It is his whole life. Today we cannot carry this alone."
The campaign's goal is €50,000, and more than €45,000 has been raised. Holmes is asking for help closing the rest.
"We're about 20% away — we've made 80% of it," he said, before offering what he has. "Depending how long I last, when you ever see me here and there, come up and tell me you donated to me, I'll give you the biggest fucking hug you'll ever imagine. I'll give you the shirt off my back."
Source: blabbermouth.net