Trying to survive!
At the beginning of 2014 I thought it was going to be a great year. It hasn't turned out that way at all.
On June 6th of this year, after enduring a long and hard winter with a broken ankle, my husband and I hopped on his motorcycle on a brightly beautiful sunny and warm day. We stuck to local roads, no highways, we thought they were safer. We were cut off by a woman making a left turn in front of us on a main drag, for a parking spot! We were both rushed to the hospital. The truly happy day we were having, the plans for a relaxing summer began it's ugly turn for us. Michael's injuries were a tear in his right shoulder, and two herinated discs in his neck. We both had road rash like crazy. Xrays showed no damage to my leg, but from the searing pain when I tried to walk, it was obvious there was something wrong. MRIs showed a re-fracture with seperation of the ankle, torn ligaments in the ankle, torn ACL, PCL and menicsus in the right knee, and a crush like fracture of the lower femur. I also had a tear in my right shoulder causing muscle strain into my neck. After two months Michael went back to work even though he was still in pain, I continued physical therapy and continued talking with my doctor about knee surgery by December. I am still in constant pain.
Then in a matter of three weeks our 2 year old granddaughter was hospitalized and two of our beloved pets passed away. I thought things couldn't get any worse.
Two weeks after being back to work in August, Michael was told his division of his company was being sold to another company but that they had offered jobs to all those employees and promised to keep them on. Then the other shoe dropped. The new company decided Michael's job was redundant to someone else's responsibilities they already had - and without warning, over speaker phone, they told my darling husband that he was no longer employed. I can't express what that phone call was like, when he told me, when he choked up, aplogizing to me as if he had done something to cause this. Promising me he would find a way to take care of me.
If I wasn't disabled, if I worked, this would all read differently - but this is how it reads: we have nothing to tie us over. They offered an insulting severence package that will only hold us until Jan 1. We have no savings, no retirement fund to borrow against, no insurance to cash in, no pot of gold to sell. We are going to file for a Chapter 7 in January. That will deal with all the bills, the medical bills as well. But it is our home we are most worried about. We are both looking, every single day, for jobs. My health may become an issue, but we'll deal wth it then. We have no health coverage right now either, and that is scary when you're disabled. We need to cover our mortgage payments until we get work. I want to believe I've lived a good enough life that good things will come to pass. We don't mind having to sell things, live a more simple life, we don't mind at all. We accept and actually look forward to the days of less stress. 
I am still working on my US Military Troops donations, we still support (with our actions only for now) anything to help injured or homeless animals. In the past we've provided a living for my parents when in need, for my mother for her last years, and her final expenses; for our daughter's wedding; for a friend who was going to have her electric turned off, who had no food; we've shopped for families just struggling from shelter to new home transistions. I have lived with a genetic vascular disorder all my life, that has threatened my life, that has had painful symptoms all my life, I have overcome eight major surguries, spousal abuse and more.....I feel like this is the worst I've ever had to deal with and I'm so very frightened. But I have to believe good thing happen to good people.
So here I am, for the first time in my life, asking for help, for me, for us.
The amount on the total is a general one. Just maybe we raise enough to keep the mortgage going for a few months until we can get to work and stand on our own again.
I can promise this, I believe in paying it forward - I believe in the beauty of life and reaching our hands out to help one another - and WHEN we come through the other side of this - I'll give back just as we get.
♥
