I promised my wife...

This is extremely tough and emotional for me to do and I am sorry if I put in too many or leave out too many details.

My name is Luke and I have some health problems. I have Crohn's Disease, Type II Diabetes, Kidney Disease, Gout and pretty bad depression.


I started working in the movie theatre business when I was in High School. I loved it from the start, all the popcorn you could eat and free movies. I ended up working in the theatre industry for years, I worked my way to having been the GM of 3 different theatres at one point or another.

One day while on break and hanging out in the managers office I heard a knock from the doorway. I looked up to see my future wife. I pretended to have some sort of authority despite the butter stains on my polo. I asked to see her application and began interviewing her for the job she was applying for. Eventually she caught on that I was full of it, but it made her laugh...

Stacy and I had lived in the Tri-Cities for a bit before we found out about Jack. We had tried for years to have a child.

One Thursday night while building a movie at the theatre my cell phone rang and Stacy asked me to come home because she didn't feel well. I drove straight home and opened the door to find a smiling, crying wife holding one of those pee sticks.

Several months later I was cutting a cord and crying just as hard as I did when I saw her walking towards me in her wedding gown. Jack was and continues to be beautiful and amazing. We play a game every day to and from Kindergarten. We see who can get to the next telephone pole first. I'm not very fast, but sometimes it's pretty close.

I lost my job at the theatre in 2011, I began getting much more ill from the Crohn's disease I was diagnosed with in 2005. It wasn't like the cramping and nausea like the other days, I was losing energy. I started getting migraines and having a harder time moving around.
I relied on Stacy and co-workers to drive me around for several months; I was having confusion as to what I was doing and didn't know how I got from one place to another (I had chunks of missing time) including a time while I was driving. It scared me and I took myself off the road. Kidney stones became a pretty commen theme. Nothing is ever solved with my health, just new issues piled on. I take about 25 pills a day, when I'm feeling ok.

With this sickness I slowed down a lot, I missed work, I almost always canceled on friends. I lost my job...

I promised my wife we wouldn't lose the house. We cashed in our retirements a long time ago, we are bankrupt and waiting on a court date to be set to decide if I qualify for disability.

First of the year I will be on Medicaid. I figure it will save us $730 a month in out of pocket expenses. I think we will be ok on a monthly basis with that money, but it probably won't catch us up on our mortgage.

We are in a great school district just a few blocks from Jack's grade school and his future junior high. We have an awesome yard to play and relax in and our house has great potential for a rental unit in the basement.

This is the toughest thing I have ever done, but I made a promise that we wouldn't lose the house.