Welcome to PC, I hope you are able to find the support and understanding that you desperately need in your life right now.

I have to warn you, my advice might not be super helpful, I'm fairly young, no children of my own, and no first hand experience with your problem, but I wanted to offer you want I can.

I'm very sorry to hear about your son. Leukemia, and cancer in general, is an awful, awful thing that doesn't make sense to anyone, especially to those who's lives it has touched. My aunt is battling a brain tumor right now. I know that her treatment is also experimental (she is doing very well right now) and also costs a fortune. But, I believe that the experiment might actually be helping to pay for it (She has four kids, two of which are in college right now, so I really don't know how else they would be able to afford it). Perhaps you could get in touch with the people that are running the experiment and talk to them about financing it -- they must have some sort of ideas on how to help, especially since they must know how expensive it is and that not many foundations will help cover costs since it is not FDA approved. If they can't help, you could also try to have some sort of fund raising drive to pay for his treatment. I'm not sure how this would work, but I know they've been done.

Next, I'm very sorry that you're husband takes his stress and anxiety out by controlling you. Perhaps before you have this conversation, you could write everything out that you want to say, that you think he will say, and you're responses to what he says to help keep you from freezing up. You could also try writing him a letter and giving it to him just before you leave the house for some errands -- that might give him time to calm down before you return (this might be a better way to approach the problem of the way he talks to you and not the best way to inform him about the financial predicament).

You might also want to consider going into therapy to work on your self esteem. Right now, the most important thing, is taking care of you, making sure you are in as good of a place as possible, so then you can take care of and support your son. You are both going to need a lot of love and comforting, understanding and support right now.

I wish you the very best. Please keep us updated on how you are doing!


Ro