A nightmare!

So I've been working on getting everything sorted out with continuing my health benefits from my old job and just when I thought I had everything sorted out, I'm afraid things have completely fallen apart.
There are a number of issues at play here, but the basic problem is that there's absolutely no way I can afford my health insurance with the pay I make from my current job. My plan had been to just put the premiums on my credit card because I can't go without insurance (1. it's too risky and 2. if I'm uninsured for any period of time, I risk losing coverage for some of my health issues due to them becoming "pre-existing conditions"). I'm not happy about having to put it on my credit card, but there's not much else for me to do.
In talking with other Hodgkin's patients, I found out that the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has a program that will help pay premiums so I jumped on applying for that last week. I'm basically just waiting for the application to get processed and then they will either reimburse me for any payments I make or just make the payments for me.
So with all that having been taken care of, I thought I was in the clear. Well, over the weekend, I finally got my bill from the company that handles the temporary continuation of coverage program for my old job (like COBRA) and it turns out that the only way you can pay them is by check, so my entire plan has fallen apart. I don't have the cash just sitting around to pay them, especially since the first payment is for the past 4 months of coverage (the time it took to get the paperwork taken care of). My LLS application won't be processed in time for them to cover that payment.
I feel physically sick about this. The only other option I know of is to risk being uninsured for 6 months and try to get into the MD high risk pool, which would be affordable...it just requires that I be uninsured for 6 months to be eligible. This really, really sucks.