Help with cancer surgery and living costs

My husband was diagnosed with bowel cancer after he lost 1/3 of his blood count in three months. His family has a history of bowel cancer and we decided to use our insurance to get the surgery over and done with quickly.

We expected the surgery to cost 26000 when it ended up costing 43000. The Southern Cross reimbursement has just come through and we only have to pay 8500 of this. Thank goodness.

The surgery took 3.5 hours instead of the quoted 2.5 hours. Unfortunately there were more adhesion's than expected.

The adhesion's were from past surgery to remove his spleen while staging Hodgkin's Lymphoma 25 years ago. He also had a quad bypass 12 years ago. To add to the complications Robert is also diabetic which required careful management.

He did not come out of the surgery well and ended up in high dependency care for 6 days which was not covered by the insurance. After nine days it was found he had fluid in his abdomen and he was transferred to public. Thank goodness the bill stopped there.

We expected him to be in hospital for 6 days and of work for two to three weeks after the surgery. He was in hospital from 7 September until 14 October. He had a septic shower half way through his period of public care. A septic shower is a sudden systemic influx of pathogens which caused septic shock. This was a life threatening condition luckily he was in the right place at the right time

After 6 weeks in hospital he is now very weak and has to gain his strength before he can go back to work and stand for an eight hour day.

Before his surgery he was suffering from anemia. He has been exhausted, felt the cold, lost his appetite and weight. Because this was such a cold winter we decided to install double glazing and paid the deposit five weeks before we discovered the cancer.

The medical bills, double glazing costs and an extended period of lost income for Robert has made our finances tight. Any assistance would be gratefully received.