Termites in our home while fighting cancer

This feels like the most embarrassing thing to do - but we really need some help.

We purchased a home for us and our 6 kids in late 2023, only for my husband Adrian to be unexpectedly diagnosed with stage 3b cancer within a matter of weeks of settlement.

2024 has been really rough for us, physically and emotionally. Adrian has been off work since diagnosis, has been going through chemo and radiation since January and also had to have a stoma created for the duration of treatment. At the moment, he has 6-7 appointments per week on average and the fuel in that alone is really costly. He is absolutely exhausted and in pain constantly, he sleeps most of the day and night, while I work full time and attempt to keep the house (and kids) functioning. Adrian has 9 more radiation treatments to go, followed by 2 major surgeries and will hopefully be back to work by December 2024.

Since moving in to our home, we have had many unexpected expenses such as the lock in the front door seizing, our oven AND fridge both stopped working and now… we have found termites in the floor boards of our house. Treatment for them is going to cost about $6,000.

We also need to remove an old wooden patio structure, 2 large silky oak trees and a few old tree stumps that are attracting termites, as recommended by the pest company. We don’t have quotes for this yet, but expect it to be somewhere around $4,000 to remove those as well.

We were intending on removing the decaying patio structure when we moved in, to construct a new patio for the kids to have somewhere undercover to play, but life had other plans for us!

Adrian had a large period of time with no income at all, he is now on income protection and getting a portion of his wage but it’s not enough for us to make ends meet and we ended up drying up our savings between the mortgage repayments and all of the items we have had to fix/replace around the house.

We just don’t have the money to cover the termite treatment and removal of the items recommended by the pest control company, but it’s not an option - it needs to happen to prevent further damage to our home. We don’t meet the criteria for any early release of super funds and I’ve explored options to take on another job for additional income but I just don’t have the time of day! We are at a total loss, so we need to ask for some help.

Every dollar will help us more than you can even imagine!!