We all know Covid and the shutdown hit a lot of people hard, our family included. Now the added financial situation our country is in is making it incredibly hard for those struggling to get back on their feet. I work in healthcare and my husband works in education. Covid was a scary time for healthcare workers. I saw my hours, time and workload increase due to forced layoffs, but. My salary was reduced. It made sense at the time to take advantage of the mortgage help offered. Get by and then try to find the way to catch up later.
Well, fast forward to August 2021 and our son gets sick. After initial few days of showing no improvement we we We all know Covid and the shutdown hit a lot of people hard, our family included. Now the added financial situation our country is in is making it incredibly hard for those struggling to get back on their feet. I work in healthcare and my husband works in education. Covid was a scary time for healthcare workers. I saw my hours, time and workload increase due to forced layoffs, but. My salary was reduced. It made sense at the time to take advantage of the mortgage help offered. Get by and then try to find the way to catch up later.
Well, fast forward to August 2021 and our son gets sick. After initial few days of showing no improvement we went to our primary care doctor. They cannot pinpoint the issue and we are referred to a pediatric GI doctor. At this time they diagnose C-diff (Clostridiordes difficle). He is put on antibiotics with not much improvement. He is having severe abdominal pain and is unable to go to school. This begins a two-year nightmare which is still not resolved to this day. GI specialist begins ordering test after test – abdominal ultrasound, endoscopy, colonoscopy, abdominal MRI, lots of lab tests and lots of different medications which offer no relief. Eventually her diagnosis is functional pain syndrome and recommendations for a psychologist referral. Our son has lost over 30 pounds, missed multiple days of school and continues to be in pain daily. While trying to cope and make it back to school we start searching for a second opinion. We find a specialist who is out of network with all insurance but comes highly recommended and we are desperate to find him relief and answers. Her diagnosis is Enzymatic Pancreatic Insufficiency – more lab work, different medications and more testing since no improvement with this course either. For a brief time we felt this was helping but he had another severe setback that caused more missed school. Advice was to increase medication or go to ER. As he continued to get worse, we had no choice but to take him to the ER. More testing, CT scan done, no emergent issues found. Our son is still in severe pain, missing school and it is his senior year. His anxiety continues to rise, medical bills are continuing to pile up and we still have no diagnosis. We move on to a third opinion. Again, more testing and lab work that we are in the process of going through now. Along with this we have neurologist appointment, counseling and upcoming psychiatrist appointment.
Our son has had to endure so much more than he should have to at this age. So many of his milestones missed or not able to truly be enjoyed. So much of this time is spent in constant pain. He had such a love for baseball and had a legitimate chance to play at the next level. We are trying to do all we can to find answers so he can get some quality of life back. Between the two of us we have exhausted sick time and PTO as well as pushed limits of our employers good graces.
We had been living paycheck to paycheck but with all the added medical bills we must juggle what bills to pay and which ones we can put off. We seem to always be behind and can’t catch up. We don’t go on vacations or spend our money frivolously. We are two hard working people that cannot make ends meet at the moment. Our house is all have and are scared to death of losing it. We don’t have the means to make up the missed payments and are trying to use the resources provided but it seems every time we turn around there are more hoops we must jump through.
Our hope is to take care of the past due on the mortgage and pay off the medical bills. With this pressure alleviated we can than make headway on other financial matters and even be able to build our savings back up. Once we can do that, we want to pay it forward and help someone else. We never imagined we would be in this situation, but our goal is to get back on our feet and help others who are struggling.
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