HOUSTON — One Houstonian isn’t taking no for an answer. He’s fighting Medicare after it paid for his FDA-approved drug treatment to fight brain cancer but refused to pay for the treatment of the drug’s known and listed side effects.

It’s a dilemma for anyone facing aggressive cancers, and using this common treatment called Temodar and other drugs like it with a known side effect discovered during World War II. It can kill blood cells and cause leukemia.

But Medicare in Texas won’t pay for early treatment, forcing patients to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars on their own.

“I just don’t let anything get me down,” Jack Reichenthal said.

It’s that attitude that helped him survive a rare, aggressive brain cancer. Now he’s facing another disease.

“So they said, ‘you’re going to need a bone marrow transplant,’” he said. “So OK fine. I’ll get a bone marrow transplant.”

Doctors say he’ll die without this expensive operation that could cost up to $800,000.

“I found out I had to pay for it myself,” he said.

Meet Jack. A self-made man, he survived brain cancer, is facing leukemia and he came up with the cash because he says Medicare won’t.

“In Medicare, it says if you have leukemia, we’ll cover it,” he said. “But by the time I reach leukemia, my chance of survival is only 25 percent.”

It all started after collapsing inside of his home. He and his wife Kathy learned unbelievable news, and just like that, the Reichenthals faced the hardest of life’s truths --  death.

“Oh it’s terrifying. It’s very, very difficult because he is my best friend,” his wife said.

Jack beat the medically unbeatable: Chemotherapy treatments of Temodar killed his brain tumor and his essential white blood cells.

Now jack needs a bone marrow transplant to survive.

Medically, the sooner he gets this bone marrow transplant while he’s in the mylodysplastic stages and not full-blown leukemia, he has a greater chance of survival.

But that medical decision isn’t one for which Medicare in Texas will pay. According to Methodist Hospital, Medicare’s denying coverage of the transplant.

Medicare states allogeneic stem cell transplants, like Jack’s, are covered for patients with leukemia and leukemia in remission but not the pre-stages of the disease, which is more curable.

In recent days jack’s been back to the doctor, not feeling well but still wanting to tell his story,

“How can they possibly say that we approve of a drug and the drug may possibly kill you …and by the way we’re not going to help you anymore?” Jack said. “Gosh that’s so weird. It’s so strange, and it’s all a money thing.”

So Jack comes up with the money, and then something else comes up. Right in the middle of working on this story, things took a sad turn for Jack. While he was preparing for his bone marrow transplant, doctors found a small lesion on his brain.

It turns out that lesion is brain cancer, back again.

“The risk of the bone marrow transplant may now be greater,” his doctor said.

Jack can’t have his transplant until he beats the cancer. So he says he’ll beat it and go on to fight Medicare.

“It’s got to happen,” he said. “We can’t all go on like this.”

In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, Jack says he’ll sue Medicare  -- not to get his money back, but to help others save theirs.

“The reason I’m so upset and the reason I’m fighting it is again I can afford it, but I’m rare,” he said. “It’s the people who can’t afford it. I’m fighting for them.”