“Somewhere I can go in and close the door and say I’m home and I’m safe is all I really want and need,” Boswell said.
With the help of Season to Share, Cancer Alliance would like to pay off his car and find Boswell a furnished apartment so he can focus on his health, have a place to store and cook his own meals, and be free of the worry of having to move his car around. He has no place to shower and must rely on public restrooms. When it’s cold in winter, he bundles up but shivers through the nights. When it’s hot in the summer, he tries to find a shady spot with a breeze to park his car. Medicare and Medicaid help pay for his cancer treatment. The payment on the SUV is $300 a month, something he barely affords on disability. “I’ve got no choice but to deal with it,” he said.īoswell became homeless five years ago and is now living in his 2003 Ford Expedition. The treatments leave him tired and nauseous. “Pizza is good because it’s thin and I can slip it in my mouth, but it can’t have any toppings, cheese is all.”īoswell also needs extensive dental work to replace all of his teeth but having the procedure is complicated by his jaw immobility and a concern that it could cause the cancer on his cheek to spread and become even more life threatening, according to the Cancer Alliance.įriday chemotherapy sessions are also a part of Boswell’s life now that his cancer has moved to stage 4. “Anything I can cut up real small is OK,” he said. It is now painful for him to speak and open his mouth wide enough to eat a normal meal. Another spot that started small on his right cheek is now a gaping half-inch deep gulley that stretches bloody and oozing from his ear to his eye.īoswell believes he’s had nine to 11 surgeries, including one on his hand during which an intubation tube caused damage to his jaw and throat, he said.
In one surgery a crescent moon-shaped flap of skin several inches long and an inch wide was carved from his forehead and pulled down to cover damage on his nose. Radiation below Boswell’s eye and then digging surgeries to remove the cancer damaged his eyesight so much that he could no longer drive a truck. It started out as a crusty bump in the small hollow between his left eye and nose, but it grew. Although he said skin cancer doesn’t run in his family, or he doesn’t know that it does, he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in 2008.
He enjoyed the independence of checking in with a boss in the morning and evening, and then being free from micromanaging throughout the day.īut the job also left his arms and face often exposed to the sun, a continuance of unprotected days playing outside when he was young. “As soon as I got sick, friends disappeared.”Ī soft-spoken man, Boswell drove a truck for 26 years.
Young mom of four: Mother, used to giving, now in need after lupus hurts career, financesīoswell was nominated for Season to Share by the Cancer Alliance of Help and Hope, in part, because he is “basically alone.” 'I want to stay right here': Alone in an aging home, a retiree with no legs hopes for a safer, more mobile life His mother, who he cared for in her later years, died in 1999.Ģ021 Season to Share: Meet your neighbors in need Although he has five siblings, he has no communication with them.