Please help our family with Debbie's medical bills

Hi, my name is Yancy, many family and friends know about my wife Debbie's medical struggles and how it has impacted our family, and we need your help to get us through this financial rough patch, and help pay off the massive medical bills she accrued.

In April of 2021, Debbie was waiting to pick up our youngest daughter from work. She went into convulsions and was found unresponsive in the car. My daughter came out to find her mother unconscious surrounded by strangers and police who were assisting. Debbie was rushed to Honor Health Osborn. After days in the hospital and numerous medical tests it was determined my wife had suffered a "thyroid storm." Her over active thyroid had caused her heart to go into atrial fibrillation. Her heart was incredibly weak and she was at serious medical risk. More importantly the doctors had discovered, through a brain scan that Debbie had suffered multiple strokes which they estimated had happened some time in 2018.

For our family a lightbulb clicked. Even the kids had noticed a change in their Mom late in 2018. She seemed to be physically struggling with walking distances (she loved to go on walks), and was frequently confused. We asked her to get checked out, but Deb is a bit of a fighter and simply said she "was fine." Unfortunately it became apparent something was off and in late 2019 her work was suffering. She had been working in medical insurance claims for veterans, but she could no longer keep up. She eventually had to settle on a job in child care, and eventually even that became too much and she was let go in early 2021. Now her medical insurance was gone and we had just gotten her on unemployment and would soon be moving her to a medical plan at the Government Health Exchange. Given her current health state and growing confusion I told her that it was time to retire and would look to take early Social Security.

Unfortunately timing is everything and Debbie's medical emergency happened right in the middle of this moment. Going into the hospital she had no insurance and we had only just applied for Social Security. Honor Health was great and worked with us to expedite her insurance on the Health Exchange, but this initial visit would not be covered. The doctor's worked on a refining of medications to get her thyroid under control and to bring get her heart out of a state of afib, and to manage her high blood pressure. In June she was back in the hospital after another seizure and more medications were adjusted. Eventually Debbie went in for a minor surgery for a Watchman device to stop the pooling of blood in her heart and allow her to get off blood thinners she was now on.

So to make a long story short we accumulated nearly $60 thousand dollars in medical expenses over a year and a half of medical visits and a surgery. Eventually Debbie was placed on Social Security Disability and between back dated pay from disability and my 401K plan we've been able to whittle the bill down to around $26 thousand. Unfortunately, Social Security determined her disability didn't truly start until late 2021 when we applied which would have been an additional 10 thousand or so we could have knocked off the bill.

Our problem is twofold: 1) Social Security just denied our claim to backdate her Disability claim to her initial hospital emergency visit in April 2021 which would have given us an additional chunk of money to pay down her medical expenses. 2) Due to Debbie being unable to work and the state of the economy we basically live on the razor's edge financially and have been unable to address these remaining expenses and the situation is getting problematic with creditors demanding payment aha making legal threats.

So why $16,800 and where will this go? Well that's the total remaining between the hospital, the surgery, and the various hospitalist who attended Debbie. Any money donated will go to those expenses, or at least allow us to put down money to keep creditors happy for the time being. Any additional funds will go towards the remainder of bills from the city for ambulance rides, to other smaller medical expenses I have more time to pay off.

Again, I'd like to thank all of our family and friends who have helped us over the course of this trying time for our family. We sincerely appreciate all of the prayers and well wishes. If you can help us with this effort, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I know there are plenty of people out there struggling right now and if you cannot help financially at this time, your prayers are certainly appreciated and please spread this around via social media. 

Sincerely,

Yancy and the rest of the Evans Clan