(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- Erica Harris thought her Prineville, Ore., home would be finished this summer. Instead, the suburban home has no flooring. Rugs and furniture lie atop subfloor. There are no kitchen cabinets, and steps that will someday lead from one room to another are not there. Harris' appliances are being stored in her garage.

The house is being built by Harris and her husband for the two of them and their six children. Plans to finish the home were stalled once Harris, 34, was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer last fall.

"We've got our kitchen designed. We've got it ready to go, but we've had to put it on hold," she said. "It's not cheap to be sick."

To call a cancer diagnosis life-changing is an understatement. In a moment, many patients go from feeling like healthy individuals to confronting mortality. The diagnosis carries not only a psychological shock but marks the beginning of a long medical journey punctuated by sickness, surgery and side effects.

While the physical and psychological effects of a cancer diagnosis are much-discussed, the financial burden can be at least as stressful.

Simply put, treating cancer costs money, often lots of it. For people without good medical insurance, the effects can be devastating. Even for those like the Harrises, who have quality medical insurance, however, the financial burden can be overwhelming.

"Their life is already turned upside down because of this diagnosis, then to add on top of that an extremely challenging financial situation, it doubles it," said Peggy Lukens, a nurse practitioner and breast cancer program coordinator at St. Charles Bend.

"They're fighting for their life and then they're also trying to figure out how they can do it, how are they going to put food on their table. It just doesn't seem fair."

Dealing with the bills has been "really, really hard," Harris said. She has kept meticulous track of her medical bills and insurance payments, and set up payment plans with some of her care providers.

Harris calculated that her care has cost her family about $9,000 since she was diagnosed last fall. It's a large sum, but it pales in comparison with the total cost of her care, which she estimates at more than $190,000.

"This was so out of the blue," Harris said. "You just don't think you're going to have to have to deal with this when you're raising a young family."

Financial burdens Average costs for cancer treatment range in the tens of thousands of dollars. According to estimates by the National Cancer Institute, only melanoma, with an average yearly treatment cost of about $5,000, rings in at below $10,000. The most expensive type of cancer listed, ovarian, costs nearly $37,000 per patient per year to treat.

The costs could be even higher; the Institute's estimates use data from 1996 to 1999, adjusted to 2004 dollars. Since that time, health costs have gone up, pushing the costs of cancer treatment up with them.

Patients with health insurance often do not bear the full load, or even the majority, of their costs. Still, with such high costs, even a fraction of the total dollars can be a burden.

When doctor's visits happen multiple times a week, even a $25 co-pay can quickly eat up income. Patients often have to use up a high deductible before insurance will begin paying. Cancer drugs are expensive; one dose can cost thousands of dollars, and many plans require patients to pay a percentage.

Then there are the non-medical costs: driving to treatments, housing the patient or loved ones in a hotel, and missed days of work. People are sometimes forced to quit working altogether.

A shot Harris took along with chemotherapy cost about $5,500 for each dose, she said. The price shocked her. "That shot cost more than our Suburban."

Large medical bills or lost income can squeeze other parts of people's finances. It can put a credit score or a home in jeopardy. A recently released anecdotal report found people who had lost insurance rang up massive amounts of debt and nearly lost their homes after a cancer diagnosis.

"People were in danger of losing everything they worked for," said Karyn Schwartz, an author of the report and researcher at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health research organization.

"It was worse than I expected," Schwartz said.

One woman, she said, went more than $75,000 in debt after her cancer costs exceeded her insurer's maximum limit.

Another woman had to quit work and, in the midst of her illness, missed the deadline to continue to receive her employer's insurance and struggled to pay high out-of-pocket costs on a less comprehensive individual insurance policy.

One man, even 10 years after he had gone into remission, struggled to find affordable health insurance.

Many Central Oregon patients have financial difficulties, said Carole Jean Zalac, chairwoman for the Cancer Resource Center, an American Cancer Society program housed at Bend Memorial Clinic. Of the patients who come to the center, she said, "10 out of 10 have financial difficulties of some sort."

"Some may be more concerned because they have to put so much out of pocket to the cost of medications," Zalac said. "It adds 10 times as much stress. Most of the patients worry about, 'How am I going to get through this?'" At St. Charles Bend, Lukens said she recently spoke to a man who can no longer pay his mortgage. Right now, Lukens said, he "is relying on the goodness of his roommates. ~ People want to do their part, but they find themselves in a place where they are not able to."

People's jobs are invariably affected, Lukens said. Some people have to cut back on hours; others take extensive and often unpaid time off. That leaves them with less money when they need it most.

For those who cannot work, health insurance can be hard to get, particularly because insurers will often reject those with pre-existing conditions.

Oregon has a high-risk insurance pool for those who cannot get insurance on the individual market, but the premiums are typically higher than for individual plans. Disability through the federal government can be an option. Still, once disability has been approved, people must wait two years to get Medicare, the disability system's health insurance.

Coping Harris finished her last dose of radiation several weeks ago. Right now, her cancer is in remission; she'll have another exam in a few months to make sure it stays that way.

She still needs a few more surgeries, she said, to remove ovaries that could later become cancerous and to remove the port implanted to aid in giving her medication.

She'll have those done in the fall. This summer, she said, she wants to do "normal things" with her family, including camping and hiking.

She and her husband still have not paid all their bills; she thinks some have not yet arrived. About a month ago, Erickson's Thriftway, a grocer based in Portland, had a fundraiser for the family and handed over about $3,800.

"It felt so great to have that burden eased," Harris said. The bills, she said, became much less overwhelming after she received that contribution.

Harris also took advantage of resources through St. Charles Bend, including gas cards, that helped her get back and forth to treatment.

Lukens, who helped Harris and many others, said she feels sympathy for many of the patients dealing with costs. "It's unbelievable. I talk to many people every day. I just don't even get how they cope."

Copyright (C) 2009, The Bulletin, Bend, Ore.