My Humble Request
Hello! My name is Katrice, and I’ve been balancing working full time as an attorney and caring for my two children all on my own. I love my children: my daughter, Zora, and my infant son, Gabriel, with all of my heart. Gabriel has very complex medical needs and I am fighting an uphill battle for his care and for him to get the benefits he deserves. I’ve come to realize the only way I can afford to manage my life and my children’s lives is by becoming his nurse.
This may appear to be a drastic step, but after months of navigating our medical and public benefits systems, as well as my own research - I’m convinced this is the best long-term solution to ensure my son receives the quality care he so desperately needs and deserves. I have weighed many options for my family and I do not take this request lightly. However, I ask you (parent or not) - what would you do for your children? This is not a sacrifice, but instead an investment in the livelihood of my precious son. I am humbly seeking support from my village - will you help support my effort to go to nursing school?
My Beautiful Son, Gabriel, and Our Journey
Let me tell you more about my beautiful baby, Gabriel. Gabriel’s severe and medically complex conditions include cerebral palsy, epilepsy (seizures), hydrocephalus, spasticity and cerebral (cortical) visual impairment, among many others. In June of 2024, Gabriel was born very prematurely at 28 weeks and 2 days, and a week later he contracted an E. Coli infection.
The infection developed into brain meningitis, which caused severe, permanent and global brain damage. Since Gabriel came home last August from the NICU, he has had four hospitalizations, including one for brain surgery and placement of a ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt. And during this time, I have been working full-time, and serving everyday as his caregiver. I spend several hours each week taking Gabriel to his appointments, and even more hours attending to his very high needs.
I cannot do this without advocating for my son. Hard. I have had to advocate for every benefit and service he has received. This includes written and virtual appeals of Gabriel's denials for Ohio's Home Care and Home and Community-Based Medicaid Waivers. Gabriel was denied several times for both waivers, because despite his severe physical disabilities, he was deemed "medically stable" or capable of receiving his care from insufficient community-based services, or services that I had to pay for privately at my own (and extraordinarily great) financial expense. Those services and my healthcare insurance did not provide skilled nursing, or the staffing necessary to address his physical and medical needs while I worked several jobs to pay his private caregiver and keep my family afloat financially.
The Ohio Home Care waiver is a Medicaid waiver that provides in-home care services for individuals requiring an institutionalized level of care and with high medical and physical needs. Institutionalized level of care means the person qualifies for care in a skilled nursing agency or hospital due to the severity of their physical or medical condition. Receipt of the waiver is beneficial to families, like ours, because it means we do not need to place Gabriel in an institution, we can care for him at home and the state's healthcare plan can pay for his skilled nursing services and therapies. After several months of denials and rejections, and a January surgery and hospitalization, Gabriel qualified for the OHC Medicaid waiver. Unfortunately, this was not the end of our challenges. For the past six months, we have been unable to find a skilled nurse to care for him. Working and caring for Gabriel are unstable long-term, especially given his high medical needs.
Because of the lack of available skilled nursing, and the unlikelihood of finding any due to the national shortage of skilled nursing labor, I have decided to return to school and become a registered nurse, so that I can be a paid, parent (skilled nurse) caregiver for Gabriel in 2027. Being his paid personal care assistant (PCA) is not an option because he needs to retain the skilled nursing hours under his Medicaid waiver in the event his health worsens. It would be a lengthy and uncertain process to requalify him for skilled nursing.
How Will Your Investment Support Us?
The anticipated time for me to become a registered nurse is between 2 and 2.5 years. It will cost approximately $28,000, including tuition, fees, books, nursing uniforms, supplies, and equipment, and medically necessary and specialized care for Gabriel while I attend classes, and complete clinical and laboratory hours. Cost breakdown:
- Remaining Tuition and Fees Cost (based upon 2024-25 fee schedule¹): $4,162
- Books and supplies: $3,400
- Licensure fees for STNA, LPN and RN certification²: $250+
- Exam fees: $400+
- Criminal background check and fingerprinting: $139
- Health screening and immunizations fees: ~$100
- Additional Program Cost: $904
- Estimated medically necessary childcare costs: $18,870 (943.5 hours * $20/hour nursing rate)
- Class hours: 132
- Clinical hours: 522
- Campus lab experience hours: 289.5 hours
Notes:
²Students must take the STNA, LPN, and RN tests separately to move onto the next stage of the program.
This schooling is expensive, but I can recoup the cost of becoming a nurse within six months, because after 14 months of coursework and obtaining my LPN licensure through testing and examination, I can immediately be paid as Gabriel’s nurse/caregiver through the Medicaid waiver. And upon graduation as an RN, I can increase my family’s annual income by $10/hour, or approximately $20,800 annually.
Like millions of families with medically complex and compromised children, or children with severe cognitive and intellectual disabilities, I have had to forego (and will forego) higher-paying income opportunities, and will stop working full-time altogether one day. Families like ours have seen at least one family member stop working, or cut back on work to care for their sick or disabled child due to their intensive, round-the-clock at-home care, constant medical appointments, hospitalizations, and therapies. Despite our children’s needs, we love them immensely and they deserve a great life, too, even with the time it requires. And our other children, including Zora, deserve to have a decent standard of living with food, housing, and clothing, while we take on the demanding caregiving responsibilities of their siblings. With no additional help on the horizon, I am taking on this challenge by going to nursing school.
Your support can ensure I can complete nursing school, provide Gabriel with the rockstar care he deserves, and support my family in the near and long-term!
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