Veteran and disabled wife need help

Greetings, my name is Guy Purcella, and my life partner is Carla. I am 62 and she is 70. I'm a proud Independent Veteran who served in the United States Air Force for seven years as an Electronic warfare technician, earning an honorable discharge in 1991. I've always been a hard worker and excelled in my training course, which was one of the most challenging in the USAF, and graduated with honors.

My wife, Carla, and I come to you today, asking for your support during this difficult time. Carla has been battling numerous health issues over the years, including three knee replacements, multiple joint issues, a shoulder impingement, breast cancer, and more. Despite her struggles, she remains fiercely independent. Her disability benefits help, but they only make a small dent in our needs.

As for myself, my health took a turn for the worse five years ago. I used to be known for my speedy recovery from any ailment. However, things changed drastically in 2018 when I was diagnosed with low-grade prostate cancer. Later that same year, I experienced severe vertigo due to a virus that damaged 40% of my right inner ear nerves. This damaged my balance and energy and also limited my ability to work as a drywall repair specialist which I had done for over 35 years. Sixteen months after the ear virus, my brain had adapted about 90%, although many things can trigger a minor attack, but then I got COVID in March of 2020 and was hospitalized for 4 days. I thought I'd bounce back quickly, but I never did. Due to Long Covid, I have terrible brain fog most of the day and extremely low energy. With the VA hospitals help, I have tried dozens of treatments and supplements to improve that & improved our diet, but I've seen minimal improvement.

These health issues have greatly impacted our lives and our finances. We live in a Camp Trailer as owning a home is currently beyond our reach. Unexpected expenses amounting to over $40,000 have left us with a huge amount of monthly credit card payments, even at the minimum, and we are struggling to keep our heads above water. A couple examples of those expenses are my wife's car cost us $3,500 right after we had put everything into the purchase of our RV, and her daughter required us to spend another $5,000 around the same time, (and many others) so we were forced to use credit. Our dream of owning a modest home in the country, where Carla and I grew up, seems increasingly out of reach. We aren’t looking for a mansion, as we would be very happy with a modular home or something affordable.

Luckily I launched a YouTube channel eight years ago, knowing that I needed a career change due to the physical toll Drywall was taking on my body. With thousands of hours of work, my channel has been a lifeline for us, helping to pay the bills. However, due to my health, it hasn't been as profitable as we'd hoped, and we come up short each month, requiring us to tap into credit over and over just to survive. We aren't wasting our money as we only eat out about once a month, we don't drink or smoke, we only have one car payment, no toy payments, etc., and we're still at risk of losing everything due to the increasing credit card debt. We would likely be doing better, despite my health, but hackers took down my channel last year, which has nearly 300,000 subscribers, and it caused my channel profit to drop about 30% and it's never recovered. I currently work about 10 hours a day, all but 1 day a month, often getting home after 9pm, including most holidays. I can't work any harder.

Our goal now is to raise funds to lower our debts and start rebuilding our credit. If we can pay down about 70% of our credit card debt, our monthly payments would drop dramatically and my credit will climb in just months. This will put us in a strong position to purchase a home next spring as I can qualify for a no-down VA loan with a credit score of around 650. My credit score is an issue right now as I'm only at a 610 right now, (down from a 740 last summer) and we are currently completely tapped out on credit resources and won't be able to pay down any debt with our current situation.

By lowering our monthly credit expenses I can also put more effort into building our future which is my online Drywall Training Courses , which I have done a lot of work on already. But I'm having to spend too much time keeping the wolves off the doorstep and not enough on building the courses out further. The potential for this business is huge, due to the number of people working in the construction trades who need to learn or improve their drywall skills. There are over 7 million people in the construction trades, and there's a HUGE shortage of highly skilled Drywallers. Our goal is to help reduce that shortage but also to train other trades such as Electricians, Plumbers etc to do the small repairs themselves. I have done polls on my channel and over half of my viewers are in the trades. You can see a recent poll I did on my Community Channel .

We are humbly asking for your support in achieving our goals and not losing everything we've worked all our lives for. We've always been independent, doing our best to tackle life's challenges head-on, but now we need a helping hand, and we really Hate to ask for help. But with your help, we can get our lives back on track, build the Drywall Academy to it's full potential, and fulfill our dreams. Once we achieve our goals, we do plan to pay it forward as we believe in helping others when we can. Thank you for considering our campaign. Guy & Carla & our 4 kitties.