Help us stay in our home

In June of 2018, I lost my twenty year football coaching position due to a change in head coaches. The new coach wanted to change things and I wasn’t asked to join him. Two months later I started feeling sick and found a strange bump on my leg. I finally checked into the emergency room and they rushed me by ambulance to Harborview Trauma Center in Seattle, about two hours away. I had contracted Necrotic Fasciitis or better known as the flesh eating bacteria. I also had  Founiers gangrene on my private parts. It took two surgeries to remove the dead flesh and for the next 11 days I stayed in the burn wards ICU ward. After that I was there another three weeks. When I finally got out, I learned my father had passed away. Two months later I learned my position at the same school as a clock operator, gym manager, and shot clock operator for basketball in grades 6-12, boys and girls was gone. They hired someone else without ever explaining why. In the 20 years that I did that job I never missed a single game at any level. By the end of the school year I had only substituted for 10 school days. 
    At the same time I lost my coaching job, my wife was terminated without notice from her position as Executive Director of a local nonprofit focused on creating a culture of health in the community. This happened the same week that her mother was diagnosed with Stage IV B Uterine cancer, which her board was aware of and they voted to let her go at the only board meeting she had ever missed because her mother’s gentleman friend had been hospitalized and consequently had his life support removed by his sons. She was at the hospital with her mom when Bruce passed on. She learned of her dismissal in an email while she was loading her vehicle with Bruce’s belongings and cleaning his small studio apartment. The board President was quoted by our local paper as “going in a different direction” when asked why my wife was let go. To this day no new Executive Director has been hired and the work done by my wife has completely ended. It must be noted that the board President and Vice President worked for the major sustaining funder organizations that funded the nonprofit and my wife had just submitted invoices to them both for their quarterly payments. We suspect those invoices were never paid and that is the real reason for her termination and shutting down the NPO. After two decades of continuous work and building programs centered on health and education she is left to start over and faces age discrimination while applying for positions she is highly qualified to do. She is currently working hard to build a business that she can use her creativity and artistic talent as well as her gift of educating and assisting people in the community. There was hope on the horizon when her sister hired her to work at the Adult Family Home she was starting. Following the successful inspection and certification for licensing her sister decided to go in a different direction and my wife was once again left with a job or paycheck. That happened in July.  We have spent every weekend since holding garage sales, selling things we’ve collected for years, duplicate items we didn’t need, and refinishing furniture to sell. It’s been a struggle, to say the least and we have had to apply for food benefits from DSHS, a program that had funded my wife’s work to teach nutrition education to food stamp recipients. She had worked for 17 years building the program, hiring and training staff and building community partnerships. She sat on multiple advisory committees and wrote a weekly column for our county newspaper. All of our work in the community helping students to be healthier and achieve their goals has been blown up and we are left asking “what happened? What did we do to deserve this terrible turn of events?” We know we will make our way out of this hole, but right now we need to pay rent and stay afloat. 
   My medical issues date back decades. I suffer from Factor-5 Leiden, a genetic blood disorder that alters the clotting ability of my blood. I’ve had 13 major orthopedic surgeries, I have metal in five places, and five years ago I suffered a major heart attack, a widow maker, after a routine hernia surgery. A clot formed, it broke off, and plugged my left descending artery with a 100% blockage. I was legally dead for approx 6 minutes and had to eventually have an anti-clotting stent installed in my heart. My lower legs are a mess from repeated DVTs and they are usually swollen and I have sores that won’t heal. After seeing my doctor all summer and going through countless therapies, they were finally improving after 5 years. Then another seemingly minor accident. While loading a free desk into the back of our Ford, the desk fell on my right foot. Xrays were negative, but it’s been five weeks and I’m still limping, the point of impact is an open, ulcerated sore that just won’t heal. 
    I have been working since I was 13 years old. We’ve been married for 40 years and will stay married as long as we are alive. We’ve done all the things you are suppose to do in order to have a stable life. Because of my medical issues I’ve been on Social Security Disability for many, many years. It was the only way to ensure I always had medical coverage. I have no retirement and plan on continuing to work as much as I can until I die. My paychecks are very limited because of my SSI disability, I’ve earned about $20,000 a year for the last two decades. That is less than I made my first year out of college almost 40 years ago. 
    I am just asking for enough to stabilize our income long enough for both of us to find new jobs. We are behind in all of our bills and for the first time in my life, even with all the medical issues and endless hospital bills, this is the first time we face becoming homeless. We would lose all of our possessions, I don’t know what we would do with our 2 Pomeranians and five cats. I’m at wits end with where we go from here and even though I’ve never lived off of handouts, I will forego my pride for the sake of my wife, friend, partner, and the love of my life. I believe I can survive anything thrown at me because I’m resilient, resourceful, and I can adapt to any circumstance. My wife would not fare as well as I could and I am pleading with anyone reading this to please help us.
       Thank You for considering our desperate plight.