Help Ms Cathy with Scheduled Surgeries

My name is Cathy Borden. I never thought I would continue to need to ask for financial help during what is meant to be my Golden Years, but I do. Since I moved my family back home from California, I have been Ms. Cathy-- a preschool teacher and early childhood music specialist. I loved this professional part of my life, teaching, leading services and other programs, and working with parents and their children. Many of you also know all or part of the past several years of my personal life. I had found my way back to my high school friend and I married Brad Borden. He got very sick, but we loved each other completely, and I married him for better or worse, in sickness and in health. He was an extraordinary guy and we loved each other so very much.

About a year into our relationship, Brad began having balance issues and a stiff neck. We discovered his neck vertebrae caused these, and he had surgery to fix them. Unfortunately, it didn't solve things. He tried stem cell treatment, but that didn't fix it either. Therapies, both in-patient and out of TIRR, didn't fix it either. The doctor said he was going to need another neck surgery. Brad was worried, but we were a team and would see it through together. He also began having prostate issues. His doctors felt we should correct that first. Brad had what was supposed to be a routine surgical procedure to fix it, and he came out of it paralyzed from the chest down. He had the second spine surgery and several other hospitalizations and surgeries for his health issues, but nothing helped. He never walked again. These surgeries, procedures, and therapies stretched out over several years, giving his Type II Diabetes and Non-alcoholic liver issues time to rear their ugly heads again. The two conditions together often lead to liver cancer, and Brad was diagnosed with it. This led to two more operations and radioactive chemo, and finally, his cancer was in remission. All of this took a terrible toll on his body, weakening him to the point where he had more and more difficulty bouncing back each time he was hospitalized. It had now been six years, dozens of surgeries, and even more hospitalizations, and we had ever-increasing medical debt. He had to stop working. He needed daily home care so I could work. Everything that would have been routine for us was put on the back burner. This extended to routine upkeep and any and all repairs on our home that we ran into, including those from the freezes and broken pipes in 2021. It also included most health issues with me. Brad's health and survival were our primary focus. At the end of July 2022, Brad's body was depleted, and he died.

Since then, I have done my best to sort things out physically and financially, but several unrelated and disastrous events have happened over the past 24 months, making this very tough. I was in two car accidents, neither my fault, but both ending with my cars being totaled! Two months after that, a most bizarre event took place. Somewhere in southeast Houston, two young guys stole a car. HPD began a police chase that headed into Sugar Land, traveling down Bissonnet, just past HWY 6. Something happened, and the stolen car jumped the esplanade, crossing over the far side of the street, across both lanes of opposing traffic. It crashed through the fence and into the corner house's backyard, traveling across it and through the homeowner's back patio support and into the master bedroom, destroying two large windows, an entire wall, and some of the furnishings inside the room.

I know these details because that homeowner was me! It was 1:30 on a Monday morning, and the perpetrators even tried to evade arrest by busting through one of my gates and running from the police. The driver was apprehended immediately right outside my front door. The passenger ran and hid in a neighbor's backyard, but K-9s apprehended him a short time later. It was like being in a scene from "Cops"! It was in the middle of the night with all those things going on! There were police and sheriff's deputies in my house, my yard, and all over my property! Tow trucks had to drag the car out of my master bedroom and yard to remove it. This tore up my grass and several plants and broke some of the sprinkler system. I have had to get estimates from multiple contractors and deal with insurance inspectors and adjusters. It got worse when my neighbor found the gun used by the thieves and accidentally shot it. The bullet traveled through her kitchen window and into the side window of the same bedroom the car had crashed through the day before. I’ve lived with a heavy blue tarp, plywood, and some plastic over the holes while waiting to be able to get it all fixed. My poor AC unit and heater have had to fight the extreme weather to keep my home livable. My home can’t be secured. Even with homeowner’s insurance I’m responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in repairs because of deductibles and non-refundable depreciation of my home and furnishings. I had never heard of those before and these repairs have to be made!

These are not my only expenses. We had extensive damage from the freeze of 2021 while Brad was so sick. Pipes in the ceiling and walls of the garage ruptured, flooding it and the adjoining bathroom and laundry room. We lost a refrigerator, a freezer, a king size bed mattress, the passenger seat from Brad’s minivan as well everything else being stored in there. I am having to buy another cemetery plot now since I had to bury Brad in the one I had purchased for me. The price has more than doubled! Covering these expenses is not plausible since I have also been forced to stop teaching in order to get my widow benefits from social security. Brad had no life insurance and no savings when he died. Our debts were so large!

The past 12 months I’ve been dealing with my own on-going medical crisis. I have had eleven surgeries and procedures for kidney stones and also parathyroid surgery. The next couple of months I have three more operations. One to finish the parathyroid surgery done incompletely and two more to remove the kidney stones that have returned again to both kidneys.  All of this is compounded by the fact that I now have a huge hive of bees burrowed into one wall of my house and I have an anaphylactic  allergy to bees! These need to be removed immediately!

Like I said at the beginning of this request, asking for help is not something I do easily. I have always been the one to give help to others, even when I could not do much. I am grateful for those who have already helped me but I am asking again for still more help! Anything you can give to help me cover these overwhelming expenses is appreciated more than I can begin to express. Please share this with anyone you feel might be inclined to help as well. Thank you for caring, your time, your continued help and your on-going prayers!