Beyond Survival : Physical and Fiscal Health Suffers, but Not Family’s Spirit
Their friends wonder how much one family can take,but the Bosustows don’t feel sorry for themselves.
“It could be a lot worse,” says Brigitte Bosustow. Brigitte, whose family has been whacked by an almost unbelievable string of medical problems, obviously means what she says. But to someone who hasn’t gone through what they’ve been through, their story sounds like Job-by-the-sea.
Until July, 1990, the Bosustows were just another enviable Westside family. A video editor and producer, Tee, now 54, had his own video production facility. He was unabashedly in love with Austrian-born Brigitte, who had succeeded, after years of trying, to give birth to Sylvie, now 7. The family even had a house on the beach in Malibu.
But two years ago, things began to unravel. The Bosustows faced the worst thing a family can face--life-threatening illness. With medical bills of well over $1 million, they also faced the second worst thing--the economic disaster that catastrophic illness routinely brings, even for the insured.
The Bosustows are still smiling and gracious when they talk about their ordeal, but the financial reality is chilling. Tee lost the production facility into which he had sunk his life savings (happily, he is still working as a video editor and producer).
A few months ago, the family’s house in Malibu went into foreclosure.
The Bosustows’ trials began in 1990 when Brigitte learned she had breast cancer. She chides herself for having delayed a routine physical, in part, because she had spent so much time in doctors’ offices trying to become pregnant with Sylvie. “I waited a little too long,” Brigitte said matter-of-factly.
The cancer had already spread to her lymph nodes, she learned. Brigitte wanted to keep the breast if she could, and, on the advice of her UCLA oncologists, she had a segmental mastectomy, far less disfiguring than the radical mastectomy so many women with similar cancers undergo. She also began radiation therapy and chemotherapy. The cost: almost $100,000.
Brigitte was still undergoing the physical and emotional turmoil of chemotherapy when one day, while Sylvie was bathing, her parents noticed that the child’s stomach was distended. The exuberant little girl said she felt fine, but Tee and Brigitte were sufficiently concerned that they went with her to the pediatrician the next day.
Tests confirmed the worst. Sylvie had Burkitt’s lymphoma, a fast-growing cancer that threatened her life. So serious was her condition that her physicians at UCLA tailored an innovative course of chemotherapy just for her. Sylvie spent most of first grade in the hospital--three weeks a month for almost a year.
Brigitte was unusually qualified to appreciate what her 5-year-old daughter was going through. “The first two treatments in the hospital, we threw up together,” Brigitte recalled. But the emotional cost to the family was obviously enormous. (Tee still gets tears in his eyes when he recalls having to face the possibility that he would lose his wife and daughter.)
And so was the financial cost of Sylvie’s treatment. “Her first treatment was $250,000,” Tee recalled. “Her second treatment was $150,000. Her third treatment was in that neighborhood, and there were eight treatments.” The total: more than $1 million.
Because of escalating premiums, Tee had insurance with a high deductible, reasoning that the best use of their money was to cover the family for truly catastrophic illness. He discovered, as people so often do, that much less was covered than he had expected. But Tee says he knows how fortunate he is to have even inadequate coverage.
“It’s bad enough having bad insurance,” he said, “but if you have no insurance, you can’t get into the hospital at all.”
On May 16 this year, the Bosustows got zapped again. Tee was stepping into the crosswalk in front of his Santa Monica office when he was struck by a 74-year-old driver who was having a fatal heart attack. Tee was thrown 30 feet.
When the Bosustows tell the story, they emphasize the positive. He had no serious internal injuries, no brain damage. But Tee’s legs were badly broken, and his hip and shoulder were fractured. He spent three weeks in the hospital. Until a month ago, he was in a wheelchair. He still can’t walk without crutches, although he began driving again two weeks ago.
Had Tee been hit by someone in a Mercedes, the accident might have taken a minimal financial toll. If he had been hit by an uninsured motorist, his own insurance would have covered the cost of the accident. But Tee was hit by a poor, elderly man who had minimal insurance. Although the matter has not yet been settled, Tee has been told he will probably receive about $15,000 from the insurer of the man who injured him. Tee’s medical bills, meanwhile, total several hundred thousand dollars.
Tee says he thinks it has been easier for him to deal with their enormous debt and uncertain income than it has been for Brigitte. Tee is from a film industry family. His father was the late Stephen Bosustow, an animator and founder of United Productions of America, home of Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing. “We’d go through years of rolling in it, then there would be nothing. I’m sort of used to it.”
He also knows that anything can happen in the entertainment industry, even good things. “I have a half-dozen TV series in various stages of development, and if one of them goes, we could start paying our bills again.”
The Bosustows’ experience has been a cautionary tale for their friends, one whose take-home lesson is that even the middle class have no safety net in the face of catastrophic illness. Says one longtime friend, who asked not to be identified, “I think it’s so wrong for them, or any other family that finds itself in a similar situation, to have to undergo a fiscal trauma like that, especially when they need all their energy to fight for their lives. . . . What happened to them could happen to anyone.”
Meanwhile, the Bosustows manage, graciously. Life has new savor, they say. Brigitte and Sylvie’s recent tests show no recurrence of cancer. Even Sylvie seems to know each day is a gift, according to her mother. In typical Bosustow fashion, Sylvie doesn’t talk about how painful her treatments were. She yelps with laughter as she recalls how she baked brownies in an oven wheeled into her hospital room and then sold them to the staff and the people who came to visit her.
“For the most part, I feel very lucky, very lucky indeed,” Tee says. “There are a lot of good people in my life.” He cites friends who have given them their love and sometimes their money. He mentions the people at Sylvie’s private school, who have given her a scholarship. He singles out the banker, a man he’s never met, who has allowed the family to stay in the house after foreclosure (they are renting it until it can be sold).
Besides, he has Brigitte and Sylvie, and work he loves. Says Tee, “I’m really very blessed.”
Tonight’s Benefit
Tonight’s performance of “Run for Your Life” at the Odyssey Theater in West Los Angeles will benefit the Bosustow Family Relief Fund. The play’s producers are Cindy Bond and Stuart Gross (executive producer). The benefit starts at 7 p.m. The theater is at 2055 South Sepulveda Blvd. Tickets are $50. Information: (310) 477-2055.
