Hello, first let me say thank you for taking the time to read this. Your time is appreciated. Here is a little about me and what brought me to this page.
My father-in-law is my husband’s best friend and the rock in his family. About 5 years ago, he was diagnosed with a muscle disease that mimics MS, and it is moving through his body fast. He is not only a retired veteran who worked another 39 years at the VA. He has a heart of gold and not a mean bone in his body, so when my husband wanted to let go of his job to help take care of Dad and the small ranch where his parents are, we agreed that we would find a way to make it work. Without the cattle going to the market, my in-laws cannot afford the place where they raised their kids and have lived for over 45 years. And so I made the promise to Dad that we would do our best to have my husband stay with him most of the time while he was going through infusions in hopes that it could help him. It was manageable, and it all rode on me to make sure this could happen. Then a simple act changed it all.
A little over 2 years ago, I almost lost my life when I had an ovary taken out, and the bowel was clipped during surgery. We did not know that they had any issues until after we went back through the notes left in my chart and found out that the plan that we had put in place was not followed. I have struggled for a long time with endometriosis, and I have a lot of scar tissue and have had several procedures to help it. Needless to say, I went home thinking we were all good and that perhaps I was just sore from surgery, and that was why I didn’t feel well. It only took 3 days to turn septic. My husband had to call an ambulance for me, and so much in our lives changed in an instant.
I went in for emergency surgery and woke up in the ICU, where I spent 5 days and another 6 on the 4th floor. I came home with an ostomy bag and a wound vac.
I had been taking college classes and working towards a bachelor’s degree in the hopes of getting a better job. We were holding our own until one mistake took all that we had been working for in the blink of an eye.
All the hard work and progress that we had been working towards crumbled. I flunked my college classes I then had to pay for them again. The bills all got behind, and our credit tanked. You ask why it was so drastic. Not only did I not work for 6 months while I recouped, but as I had mentioned, I was the primary breadwinner in our house. It ate all our savings to just keep the phones on, bills paid, and food in the fridge.
I had been working for a family friend’s small business. And after being out of work for so long, my husband was having a hard time finding a job. It seemed like we just kept hitting a wall.
Then a job opened where I could make more money, but it’s 15 hours away from home, close to my parents. To help dig us out of the hole, I took that job. I run a small location to help with the school buses in our community.
In doing so, I live in a home with no running water and no electricity. I did pretty well with packing water this last year; it was a little hard with as much snow as we got, as I live in a rural Montana town. And I have a small generator for electricity. I am off the grid. We built what we could afford. My home is 9 feet wide by 13 feet long. So it’s small.
If we could get some help, we could get water put in and the bills paid up, and be sure both sets of parents are taken care of.
Many ask why we don’t just get full-time jobs and not worry about the family. The family was all that we had when I almost lost my life, they stayed but my bedside, took time off work to sit with me when my husband had to go take care of the cattle or take me to get wound changes at the hospital. Me working my butt off and making sure they are taken care of back now is how I honor them back, they gave us so much for so many years. All the years of going to 4H meetings, FFA, sports, choir concerts, you name it. I could not have asked for better parents. If you could please help me keep my promise, I would be forever grateful and would pay it forward as well. I owe 30,000 for college and another 16,000 for the rest of the bills. Putting in water and power will cost us another 25,000.
Thank you again for listening.
https://paypal.me/MillisaHaas?country.x=US&locale.x