My name is Melissa Skaggs and 2025 has not been a good year for our family. We don't normally like to ask for help, but it has come to that point where we may need it. Between my son's heart surgery, losing his grant for school and my husband's recent cancer diagnosis and current treatments.

Our son was born with hypoplastic right ventricle. A heart has 4 chambers. 2 pumping chambers and 2 receiving chambers. His heart only has 3. His is missing the chamber that pumps the blood to the lungs. The doctors were able to go in through 3 separate surgeries and move things around to make up for the missing chamber. Since then, he has been doing very well, with normal checkups and scans but we knew it wouldn’t last forever. Last year he went in for a schedule heart Cath. The doctors said they wanted to go in and put a stent or two in his shunt to open it up and allow his O2 stats to come up and give him more energy. In mid-May of this year, he went in for his procedure. It lasted about 4 ½ hours and everything went well. They were able to put two stents in and open it up. We got the hospital bill, and it was over 250K. Luckly insurance took care of most of the bill, but it did max out his out-of-pocket liability which is $7000. We are doing ok and felt we can manage and just make payments over the next couple of years and get it paid.

Just a week or so after our son's heart surgery, my husband went to his doctor to get a couple lumps on his neck checked out that he had noticed around a month or so prior but wasn't going away. The doctor took a look and set him up for some testing’s and it came back as cancer. Cancer does not run in our family, so it was not something we were really looking for. They sent him up at the local cancer clinic and started setting everything up and producing a treatment plan. 6 1/2 weeks of chemo and radiation. There was a lot of stuff that had to be done before they could start, such as more testing and more scans to make sure it hasn’t spread to other parts of the body. We knocked all that out and finally started his first day of treatment on the 30 of July. As you can figure all this stuff is not cheap and the bills just now starting to come in. He has also maxed out his out-of-pocket liability for this year. another $7500 because he is on his own plan. That was a kick in the gut, but money can be made life lost can't come back so we move forward with getting my husband cured of cancer.

After all that we get a letter in the mail that tell us that our son no longer qualifies for the grant he was awarded due to his heart condition. Because of new policy they no longer just take his needs in consideration for the grant. now they also look at family size and income. guess what we make too much. he also doesn't qualify for Pel grants for the same reason. Under normal circumstances we would find a way to pay for any one of these expenses on our own and be ok, but with everything hitting at once within the same year is going to be really hard on us. I hate to ask but anything will help us in this situation.