Renee's Medical journey: Family Support Needed

Renee and I have been married since 1983. We live in a modest house in the suburbs of Philadelphia where we raised our 5 children. Now they range in age from 41 to 26. We always had a very tight family and enjoy each other’s company. Now we are blessed with 7 grandchildren, 3 of which live in our home with us, making a full house of 9 people. Renee and I started a small family landscaping business, helping people in our community and supporting our family. Once our children were born, Renee stayed home to raise our children as I worked to support the family. As our children grew up, several decided to live at home and began working with the family business. A dream come true for us.

During the last 15 years, Renee began to experience some neurological issues, needing help at times from the family and myself. Among losing her strength and eventually a good part of her mobility, Renee’s condition took her voice from her. We eventually found a doctor who said he could restore her voice. After a failed surgery, Renee had a revision surgery during which she aspirated blood and wound up in the hospital for the next few months. Renee was fighting various related illnesses and conditions after severe pneumonia and sepsis. Renee’s condition finally improved to the point where the hospital wanted to transfer her to a rehabilitation center to attempt to get her back on her feet. After several days of the worst care she ever received, Renee was back in the hospital with another infection. As she was once again recovering from pneumonia in the hospital, I began preparing to bring Renee home and committing whatever it takes to care for her. After convincing social workers, doctors, and family members that I could mentally care for my bedridden wife for however long it would take, I brought her home and asked my son if he would be able to take over the small landscaping company that my son and I spent our lives building. I was committed to helping Renee with her extensive care and recovery.

After two and a half years, we completely exhausted our hard-earned savings and maxed our credit cards to try to keep our bills and mortgage paid. Now that we are so dangerously close to needing funds to make payments on our bills and loans, we decided to ask for help to continue our life journey and continue to live in the home we all spent most of our lives in.