It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strandchamps.

It's the holiday season, so chances are you're shopping for presents.

The kids want new hoodies or Lego sets.

Your mom wants yet another gardening tool.

And then there are the gifts that people wish they didn't

have to ask for. So my dad, his name is Jay Costello. He and my mom live in Hartland, Wisconsin,

just outside of the Milwaukee area. When he was 56, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

This is Meg Castello, and this is the story of the year her family had to ask for a really big gift.

Survival rates for myeloma and people with his form of myeloma is three to five years.

If patients with myeloma respond to chemotherapy treatments,

they go in for a stem cell transplant. The way my dad has always kind of described it to people

is it's like a control alt delete on your system. Our whole family was just trying to like prepare

for this quite frankly massive operation in his recovery,

which would be six months to a year.

I don't remember his first bills, but I believe my mom has now told me he's over the three or five million dollar mark.

One of the drugs he's on now is like $30,000 a month.

And so there's, of course, a financial bit of turmoil.

I work in fundraising, and so I have a little bit of benefit

in just knowing that when people feel

called to do something, they give money. And so I had just said to my mom, you know, what can I do?

She just said, I don't know. And then I just thought to myself, I know what I can do.

We put together a GoFundMe fundraiser. Anything you can give would make a difference.

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