Asking for Help Online: Medical Crowdfunding Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe raising money online for medical costs, and what it was like to ask. The bills came from a toddler's leukaemia, a baby born at twenty-six weeks, a roofer's chest pain with no insurance, a clinical trial two hundred miles away, rationed insulin, a prosthetic leg, top surgery refused by insurance twice, IVF, rehab for a brother's drinking, and hospital bills that arrived after a husband's funeral. Writers include a nursing assistant tired of being the strong one, a fourteen-year-old who built a page for her mother, a church organiser, a sister who wrote the updates, students who raised money for their teacher, truckers who looked after their own, and a donor who now gives every month. Places run from Leicester to Limerick, Manila to Mumbai, Dubuque to Auckland. They describe goals and updates, holds on funds, withdrawal rules, an unexpected tax letter, a copycat page, money they did not need, comments from strangers, and asking the same people for a seventh time. Some chose another route: letters to sixty trusted people, a benefit dinner, payment plans and no page at all. Not every page worked: one raised six hundred and forty pounds in a month and its owner lost his van, and one wife who went behind her husband's back says it cost their marriage something.

Who it's for

For anyone looking at a blank fundraising page for themselves or someone they love, for the relatives and friends who end up running it, and for donors who wonder what happens next.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 279 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.