There's this great disease called multiple sclerosis, in which your brain attacks itself, causing progressively more and more disability as the damage accrues. So far, my wife has had three "attacks", two of which involved going partially blind in one eye. In all three cases, she recovered. However, the more attacks she has, the more damage her brain has taken and the more likely it is she won't recover from an attack. Thus, it is really fucking important she take a medication that slows down the progression of the disease so she ends up able to see and walk and things like that.
That drug is Tysabri and, under my health care plan, it would cost about $5,000 a month.
Bit of background: I am a medical student and she was a software engineer. We had some savings beforehand ($25K) and accepted her salary was going to be put towards my schooling and our living expenses. She had great health insurance so her drug costs were very low. To keep my parts operating, I take a passel of generics that cost around $100/month, plus doctor's visits to keep all the levels in check. So at the outset we were only spending a few hundred a month on our medical needs. (FYI, none of them are preventable with lifestyel changes. The only thing that will fix my depression besides medication and therapy is the eventual bullet I put in my head.)
Then she lost her job. Now she has COBRA, which costs $1500/month. We could use my school's health insurance, which is around $289/month, but doesn't cover any MS medication at all. Meanwhile, she's frantically looking for a job (no luck so far) and I can't really get another job while in med school, at least, not one that will net $1500 a month. Shit's hard, yo, and I am trying to keep up and not fail out. Repeating a year at $50K a pop because I was trying to make a little money on the side is idiotic.
...and she was diagnosed, out of the blue, when she was 38.
So I want to put this out here. It's very difficult to retire at 40 when you have other life plans or when life has other plans for you. For now, we hope she gets a new job with better insurance or I take out more loans. The alternative, where she doesn't take medications at all, is...horrifying.