Medical Issues & Financial Hardship
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In April 2012, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She had to do all the chemotherapy & radiation for months on end, as well as go through surgery to have a 15 lb. tumor removed from her uterus. During the course of the surgery, the doctor somehow decided that it was a good idea to snip part of her bowel, therefore leaving her with a permanent need for an ileostomy bag. This bag has to be monitored and attended to 24/7 as it could need to be replaced at any given hour of the night or day; & the visiting nurses only come to the house for 1 hour/week, which left me as the only person in the family willing & able to deal with this. So, this led to me giving up my apartment & life to move back home to try to do the jobs of the nurses who are rarely ever even here.
My mother is still not in remission & earlier this year, my father was also diagnosed with cancer & had to begin his chemotherapy & radiation. However, an even worse problem with him is that he has debilitating dementia which has only gotten worse & worse every single day. For those that have never dealt with dementia, it’s not just the fact of him forgetting things as simple as names, what day it is, what time it is, what he just said or heard, what is food & how it’s supposed to even be eaten, etc.; it also makes those who have it extremely paranoid, irritable & downright argumentative on a constant basis, which is hard enough to deal with when you don’t have the other problems that are going on in this house.
And none of this is even taking into account that I myself have struggled with crushing G.A.D. (general anxiety disorder) for over 15 years now; that also leads to various other physical & mental symptoms that make my life very difficult, even without the stressors mentioned above.
All of the above have led to severe financial problems as well. My mother was forced to retire from the job she had held for over twenty years. My father is completely incapable of making any kind of income at all. The social security they get only covers a portion of the monthly bills & leaves nearly nothing for anything else, including food, as we usually only even have food in the house one week out of each month if that. And as I said, I was forced to quit my attempts at holding various temp jobs that I had been struggling through all my life when I had to come home & then my unemployment also ran out. On top of this, I was also told that I couldn’t get any disability benefits for my own worsening G.A.D. issues either unless I saw a doctor every single month. Without a job or income, or the ability to drive (as I have had panic attacks any time I’ve ever tried to drive in my life), I have no insurance to pay for any kind of monthly doctor visits & obviously no money to pay for the doctors or medicine out of pocket as we can’t even afford food after paying as much as we can of the bills each month.
In other words, we need an immense amount of help to even eat let alone take care of any other expenses like house repairs or gas to get food or see doctors. So please help out in any way you can, as things have only gotten progressively worse with no sign of improving any time soon, if ever. Thank you.
My mother is still not in remission & earlier this year, my father was also diagnosed with cancer & had to begin his chemotherapy & radiation. However, an even worse problem with him is that he has debilitating dementia which has only gotten worse & worse every single day. For those that have never dealt with dementia, it’s not just the fact of him forgetting things as simple as names, what day it is, what time it is, what he just said or heard, what is food & how it’s supposed to even be eaten, etc.; it also makes those who have it extremely paranoid, irritable & downright argumentative on a constant basis, which is hard enough to deal with when you don’t have the other problems that are going on in this house.
And none of this is even taking into account that I myself have struggled with crushing G.A.D. (general anxiety disorder) for over 15 years now; that also leads to various other physical & mental symptoms that make my life very difficult, even without the stressors mentioned above.
All of the above have led to severe financial problems as well. My mother was forced to retire from the job she had held for over twenty years. My father is completely incapable of making any kind of income at all. The social security they get only covers a portion of the monthly bills & leaves nearly nothing for anything else, including food, as we usually only even have food in the house one week out of each month if that. And as I said, I was forced to quit my attempts at holding various temp jobs that I had been struggling through all my life when I had to come home & then my unemployment also ran out. On top of this, I was also told that I couldn’t get any disability benefits for my own worsening G.A.D. issues either unless I saw a doctor every single month. Without a job or income, or the ability to drive (as I have had panic attacks any time I’ve ever tried to drive in my life), I have no insurance to pay for any kind of monthly doctor visits & obviously no money to pay for the doctors or medicine out of pocket as we can’t even afford food after paying as much as we can of the bills each month.
In other words, we need an immense amount of help to even eat let alone take care of any other expenses like house repairs or gas to get food or see doctors. So please help out in any way you can, as things have only gotten progressively worse with no sign of improving any time soon, if ever. Thank you.
Organizer
Joy Janelle Waldenville
Organizer
Freeport, PA
