Just some background, my wife and two children live in Phoenix, AZ. All of our family lives in Minnesota, so all we have out here is ourselves and a few friends.
It all started with my wife(Kelly) getting Covid 19 in October of 2021. She ended up being hospitalized for 2 weeks because her sodium levels dropped so much her brain began to swell which caused Covid brain or Covid fog. It was very similar to a person having dementia. She imagined things happening and people being there when they really weren’t there at all. She couldn’t be trusted by herself for the first few weeks of recovery so I had to take 2 ½ weeks off unpaid to take care of her. She was off unpaid until the beginning of January 2022 when she was finally able to return to work.
Even though Kelly was able to return to work when she was in the hospital they saw high CEA(cancer indicators) levels so the hunt for cancer and more doctor bills were incurred.
Fast forward to March 2022 and her brother was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and her mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. So we went back to visit them for Easter in April of 2022. It was the last time we saw him alive as he passed away on 9/12/2022 Kelly’s birthday. We received the news while out for her birthday dinner.
Kelly had a colonoscopy in May that appeared clear, however she woke up in early August with severe pain and went to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with a blockage in her intestine that turned out to be colon cancer. She had an emergency surgery and has thankfully recovered, however she missed another month of work unpaid.
Then in late September I fell and broke two metatarsals in my right foot which ended up with me having surgery and missing a few weeks of work, unpaid.
Soon after that my Grandmother who was in hospice passed away so now we had two funerals in Minnesota 190 miles apart on the same weekend. So I went to my grandmother’s funeral and she went to her brother’s funeral.
I was able to work with some help from a friend taking me to work and a rented knee scooter but money was getting tighter. Kelly and I currently have $30,000.00 in medical bills due to Covid, cancer and a broken foot . We burned through our savings and had to start using credit cards to get by. I recently took out a $35,000.00 loan to pay off the credit card bills but now Kelly’s 82 year old mom has stage 4 brain cancer and her 92 year old dad isn’t doing well either. We managed to pay for Kelly to go help them for a few weeks while her mom was doing whole brain radiation, but it doesn’t look like the outcome is going to be very good.
We were able to get a Christmas flight for my wife and daughter to go back for Christmas but even using some flight rewards the flights cost $900 which I had to put on a credit card.
I am hoping that some kind soul or souls will find it in their hearts to help us pay off the medical bills and the $35,000.00 loan. I have been fortunate that I have good enough credit to get us this far but I fear that I will not be able to sustain the minimum payments and it will all come crashing down. With what appears to be one or two funerals on the horizon that we will have to travel for again. Any help is appreciated. All I can do is trust in our lord god to help us get through our struggle and financial strain.
May god bless you.