Thank you for taking the time to read our story. Time is a valuable thing so I appreciate you giving that gift.
Hey there, my name is Lindsey. My husband and I have two beautiful kids together, they are our world. Family is the most important thing to us. We don’t care for the “finer things in life” but instead, we enjoy the simplicity of the small moments that make up our lives and sharing experiences together.
Unfortunately, our family time hasn’t been as full of laughs and exploring new things together this past year. My husband was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 2019 and in the last year his body has slowly started rejecting his medicine and has caused him to have two terrible flair-ups, resulting in him being out of work for the past year. Now, if you are not familiar with Crohn’s disease let me try to explain it without boring you with technical terms. Crohn’s disease causes rawness and inflammation throughout the gastrointestinal tract (it can be anywhere from your throat, all the way down through your large and small intestines, and through your colon). It can feel different depending on where exactly the flair-up is but my husband experiences excruciating pain in his stomach, loss of bowel control, excessively throwing up, inability to eat/keep food down, and as you can imagine extreme fatigue. Now, when Crohn’s is managed through medication and diet a person is considered to be in remission. The Crohn’s is there but it is under control. It is a different story when it is not managed, and that is what my husband and our family have recently been battling this past year.
My husband has been hospitalized twice due to Crohn’s flair-ups that caused infection to spread through his lower intestine. Both times he had to be treated with several antibiotics and have a drain put into his stomach to suck the infection out. Fortunately, he hasn’t had to have surgery to remove that part of the intestine despite the infection spreading in the same area twice now. During these two times, he has had to stop his medication (he cannot take it while taking antibiotics) and they have now started him on a new medication that will hopefully prevent another flair-up from taking over his life.
During this whole affair with his flair-ups, his doctors have kept him out of work because Crohn’s disease makes you more susceptible to infection and sickness and that was the last thing my husband needed to be around when he was already trying to heal. In addition to the symptoms I previously described my husband has been so, well, just tired. Crohn’s disease doesn’t just impact your physical health, but your mental health as well. While trying to physically maintain his health and well-being he has been battling with his mental health as well as depression. He doesn’t understand why this is happening to him, why it is such a battle, and he is worried that he is going to pass this disease on to his children. He’s just been in a state of constant battle.
This brings me to my request, from you. The reader. Thank you for even reading this far. If I do not get the assistance I need, hopefully, our story has at least shed some light on the battles people with Crohn’s disease can face. It is not something that is talked about enough. During my husband’s absence from work I have not only continued to work but also taken our youngest child with me so that we do not have to pay for child care (also because I just love having my little guy with me!) I have been the sole provider for our household while also managing to pay for the extra things (Christmas, two birthday parties, emergency vet bills, you know what I mean!). But it has been a financial battle running a household that was used to two incomes and was abruptly cut down to one.
I currently have $10,000. in debt from loans and credit cards. The majority of this is from paying rent every month which is $1,175.00. I am reaching out for help at this time because now that my husband has recently started his new medication, I am hoping he will be cleared to go back to work soon, but it is going to be constant paranoia that all it is going to take is one small cold to land him back in the hospital and driving me further into debt just for our family to survive. We have never needed any type of assistance to support our family and have not invested much in savings because well like I said, we haven’t placed much importance on money or material things. We take care of our necessities, plan for small extras, and enjoy our time more than anything. I am making this request in hopes of a clean start for our family. For both our health and finances. So many plans for our family have been put on hold because my husband has been sick and I have been trying to just get us by financially. The biggest of those plans is building our house on our family’s property. We could not take the next step in this process while my husband has not only been sick but out of work. A year ago we were pre-qualified for our loan and about to start building and then my husband got sick. And now we have this pile of debt. This isn’t even including my husband’s medical bills. It would be an amazing weight lifted for our family to be able to put this last year behind us and move forward healthy and stable.
Thank you so much for reading and for any assistance you can give.
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