Hi, I'm Matt. I work full-time as an accounting specialist at a hospital, but am not paid a livable wage sufficient to support my family. I live in public housing with my spouse and our cat, but the ever-creeping rise in cost of basic essentials and medical supplies has ensured that even with a recent pay increase last August, we're still barely scraping by paycheck-to-paycheck. My spouse and I both have a number of health issues and disabilities, so my income from this job is all we can steadily rely on.

On Monday, November 17, I felt sick enough to stay home from work. I don't get paid sick leave, so this is unusual for me: it typically takes a severe illness (or viral infection) to keep me from going in to work. On Tuesday, I felt even worse, so I took another day off and went to the emergency room. I was surprised to learn that I had a kidney infection, and it was bad enough that they wanted to keep me in the hospital for observation (the first overnight hospital stay of my life.) They gave me antibiotics and carefully watched my vitals. I was in the hospital from the night of the 18th through the morning of Friday, November 21st. They finally determined it was safe to send me home, with another batch of antibiotics.

I'm pleased to report that I'm recovering well and am almost feeling back to my old self. However, we're going to have a very difficult time surviving a week's worth of lost income. We're behind on rent and bills as it is, and have postponed a veterinary appointment for our cat. We have enough to cover basic food and supplies for now, but when my next paycheck is half of what it normally is, it's going to hit us hard. We're going to start needing to choose between paying for food, rent and medicine.

My basic pay rate is $19.07 an hour, which grosses $762.80 a week. In practice, after taxes and insurance premiums, my take-home is about $1225 every two weeks. I'm asking for more than just my lost income so we have a buffer in the event of any further unexpected medical issues. (this was actually my second visit to the ER in the span of a month; on October 27th, I went for a basic UTI and received antibiotics that didn't take. It's a long story that I'll work on writing up, but the long and short of it is that I'm not going to take my currently recovering health for granted.) This will also help cover the out-of-pocket costs incurred during my stay: copays, rides for me and my spouse to and from the hospital, meals, snacks and comfort items, etc.

Thanks so much for reading, giving if you can and sharing if you're inclined to do so. Every little bit or boost helps.