Hello Family and Friends,
You know that saying, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” That should be Tracie and Lance Gambill’s life motto. We have struggled financially due to Tracie’s cancer and Lance’s back surgery. We have shut off our phones and internet because we cannot pay for them. We got down to the last day of our utility disconnection when someone jumped in to help us. We have stripped ourselves down to the barest of bones regarding expenses. We have cut EVERYTHING of excess. We live off Ramen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We have nowhere else to cut. We are unable to pay for half our monthly expenses. We have run into one problem after another. We cannot catch a break.
Tracie’s truck broke down last year and requires a new fuel pump. The truck continues to sit dead in the driveway since we cannot afford to repair it. Tracie’s disability benefits only cover half of their monthly expenses. With no warning, we lost Lance's income. We cannot afford any emergencies, and yet we have had not one but several more crises. Tracie ran our car into a concrete barrier on Tuesday. We were driving back to Indy when the accident occurred on Interstate 65 just south of Louisville. Our car had to be towed because the electrical system fritzed out. Now we are without our only vehicle. With all the doctor's appointments, we cannot be without a car.
Unfortunately, part of cutting our expenses included changing our auto insurance plans. Tracie hasn’t had an accident in forty years of driving. Lance has also never had an accident, so we changed our policy to a higher deductible to lower our monthly payments. We made this change two months ago, and wouldn’t you know, we need to come up with $2000 to cover the deductible. We cannot get the car back up to Indianapolis for the rest of the repairs until we can pay the mechanic. We no longer have car rental use in our policy, and we cannot afford a rental on our own. The personal medical coverage is no longer in our insurance policy, so we have also been responsible for Tracie’s injuries from the accident.
The day of the accident was difficult. No one stopped to see if we were okay or needed help. We needed to get the car off the center of the interstate. Luckily, the vehicle ran enough to get it over the three lanes and halfway up a nearby ramp. Then the dash went crazy, and the car died. We called our Indiana AAA phone number, which couldn’t help us. They transferred us to the Kentucky AAA, which could not help us find a place to tow our car. There was a Hyundai dealer with a service shop nearby, so we decided to transport it there. We told them there would be two passengers. Somehow our call was “disconnected,” and Kentucky AAA didn’t bother to call us back, so we had to call Hoosier AAA and be transferred to Kentucky AAA—again, only to start the process over with all the policy numbers, explanations, area descriptions, and a reminder that the tow truck driver needs to transport us as well as the car.
While waiting for the tow truck, Tracie called the Hyundai dealership to give them a heads-up. After five calls from the switchboard to the service center and one hang-up, the operator tells us that the dealership does nothing but minor services that do not require a mechanic. Okay, back to square one. The driver shows up and has no idea that he must transport us. He didn’t know what to do when we told him our destination had to be changed. Lance stood on the side of a very busy interstate ramp and called around, but had trouble finding anyone that could work on a hybrid car. Lance found the only open mechanic, and they claimed they could work on hybrids.
The new service shop, AutoMaxx, was 1.2 miles away, yet we had to pay AAA before they would transport our car—another expense and a fight we were not expecting. We are trying to get AAA to reimburse us because we were within our free mileage allowance. The driver also got lost and couldn’t read his GPS. The mechanic was in a tiny shop in a filthy, scary, and unfriendly area, but our mechanic was friendly. He looked at the damage and determined that one of the electrical harnesses had gotten caught in the broken wheel well, and the damaged tire had shredded the harness.
The mechanic said getting the parts to drive back to Indy would take days. It’s 5 p.m., and Tracie begins calling car rental places. No one is open for business. Tracie knows the airport isn’t far away, and they ALWAYS have car rentals, so she calls Lyft. They claim “suspicious” activity with our account and will not come to get us. The local bus doesn’t go that far. Now everyone at the service shop, including another customer, is trying to find a way to get us to the airport or back to Indianapolis. Lance contacts Mega Bus, and they will not have a bus to Indianapolis until 3 am, and still, there is a problem getting us to the airport.
Finally, an hour after dealing with the mechanic and looking for ways home, Carlos, an Uber driver, came and got us. Tracie is in pain. Both Tracie and Lance have no more patience with the situation. Carlos was great. He barely spoke English, but he could see Tracie’s upset and insisted on caring for her. “No worries. I get you to help.” He put our three bags into the car and drove us straight to the airport car rental door. He even waived his fee for driving us there.
Tracie gets online to find the cheapest car rental and books the car. We paid for the entire car rental bill with our debit card. We got to the counter to pick up our car, and they wouldn’t release the paid-in-full vehicle without a credit card or a plane ticket. Tracie went to every car rental place, ten in total, begging for a rental car that would accept a debit card. No luck.
Tracie asked Enterprise to waive that issue since she has been a loyal customer with an account, but instead, the gentleman suggested we find a place to stay for the night and get an off-airport car in the morning. Thanks for nothing, Enterprise. We asked if we could use someone else’s credit card for the deposit, and they said yes if the person was standing in front of them with the card and not over the phone. Seriously? How many more issues can take place in the airport? We shouldn’t have asked that question.
The time has elapsed for canceling the car rental, and the payment must be forfeited. Can anything else go wrong? Our phones are dead, and we are walking around the airport with all our luggage. The evening was getting more and more draining. We had credit cards with us but no available credit on the cards. We had maxed out our credit cards to cover day-to-day living expenses. That made the situation even more frustrating. We found phone charging stations, and Tracie remembered that Capital One tends to work with people. She gave Capital One the amount needed by the car rental place, and they instantly made that amount of credit available, so Lance went back to the counter and persuaded them to reinstate our unused, paid-for vehicle.
We have a car to get home and cannot wait to leave Louisville. The problem now is that the counter girl was so frustrated with dealing with our issues that she forgot to give us the necessary paperwork to get out of the parking garage. Tracie found an extremely rude attendant and made them very unhappy because Tracie made her do her job and get us released from the garage. We made it back to Indy, so what else could go wrong? We shouldn’t have let our guard down. One mile from home, the car to the right of us attempted to sideswipe our rental car. We are on West Street downtown, and it was busy. Lance was able to get away from the vehicle by swerving into oncoming traffic, and the car coming towards us managed to swerve away from our rental car, but this was getting to be too much. The driver must have been drunk from the way they were weaving around from lane to lane.
We got home to find our basement flooded and water running outside. The dogs must have damaged the outside hydrant because its insulated cover was chewed up in the kennel, so who knows for how long it was running or how high the water bill will be? Speaking of our dogs, we only came home from Marietta because our dogs managed to lock our dog sitter out of the house. Tyler had a key and was able to go to the house and take care of our pets. We are so grateful for that. It was one less thing to worry about.
In the past six months, our 143-pound dog has begun having seizures and has required emergency medical treatment—another unexpected expense. The seizures seem to be a monthly occurrence now, but we have no money to get his prescription. On Christmas day, our pipes broke and caused damage from the second floor, through the first floor, and into the basement. The water froze on each floor, making our floors ice skating rinks.
Lance broke his front tooth off, and we had no way to pay for it, so we had to beg for help and sell off the last of our possessions worth any money. We even began selling our clothes. Lance’s back is forever disabled. Social Security Disability had denied his request for benefits last fall before the doctor made his final diagnosis. In January, the doctors gave us the bad news that while they tried to repair his back by chiseling out the nerves, adding a cage, and fusing his vertabrae, Lance will always have nerve damage, and he will live with pain for the rest of his life. He can no longer lift, pull, or carry more than 15 pounds. He is unable to stand or sit for long periods of time. These permanent restrictions are making it difficult for Lance to find a job. He keeps trying, but so far, no luck. Lance has filed an appeal with Social Security now that his condition is "officially" a permanent disability. We tried to hire a Social Security attorney to fight the appeal, but Lance needs another doctor's opinion, and we do not have the funds to send him to another doctor. We have to fight that alone too.
As for Tracie. She continues to battle her cancer. There is no sign of remission in the near future. Her cancerous plasma cells reproduce faster than they can be killed. There are days that she cannot dress without assistance, cut up her food, or hold a glass, and she will continue to require help until she can have hand surgery. One more expense that we cannot afford. Until then, the affected fingers' tendon sheaths become irritated and swollen, causing pain and keeping the fingers in a flexed, painful state. The tendons need to be surgically released. Tracie cannot remember the last time she was able to wear her wedding ring. Bone pain from cancer continues, and now the hips are injured from the car accident. Last year, Tracie broke several ribs from coughing during one of several battles with pneumonia. Tracie loses her voice most nights due to the damage of fighting laryngitis for three months straight. One of the most challenging parts of plasma cell cancer is knowing that bones are weak and have lytic lesions (holes), which result in broken bones and an impaired immune system. The most common cause of death in this cancer is infection. This car accident puts Tracie at risk with both.
Tracie tries to make money any way she can. She attempts to be a pet sitter and works on other people’s homes as a handyman, but she can only provide those services on good health days when she can walk and use her hands. Generally, one good day is followed by two days of rest for recuperation. Meanwhile, Tracie runs two online stores. Tracie handles everything from programming the website, designing the merchandise, managing the day-to-day accounting, and all the marketing and social media sites connected to the stores. Tracie even creates advertising videos. Due to Lance’s permanent disability, Tracie must handle all the house’s heavy lifting and physical labor, even though she suffers from a great deal of neuropathy from the cancer treatments.
Friday night’s storm took a lot of our shingles and bricks off our chimney, but we have no way to replace them or can afford to, so our house is leaking. Of course, it's our luck for it to happen two months after we dropped our house insurance. That's just our luck. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. So many more things have gone wrong these past few years that depression runs deep in the Gambill household. Frustration abounds.
Tracie feels guilty for having terminal cancer and needing so much help for the simplest things. Lance feels guilty for putting so much on Tracie. Yet with all the things that continue to go wrong, Tracie is grateful to have kicked her cervical cancer and continues to keep watch for other cancers, a lovely side effect of daily chemotherapy. Tracie and Lance feel blessed for the family and friends who have helped in our times of need, and we absolutely hate to ask for help again, but our car is a necessity we cannot live without due to Tracie's medical condition. We are incredibly thankful for our two beautiful granddaughters. They are the reason behind Tracie’s fight for life.
We are only asking for help for one of our many issues. With so many scams online now, we included the photos so you can see that we are being honest and don't exaggerate our difficulties. We need help raising the deductible to get our car back to Indy. We would be grateful if you could donate just a few dollars to help us, and in exchange for donations over $50, we would be happy to send the donor a gift or work for the donation.
If you would rather send help to us directly, please do so. Our address is in the disconnection photo. If you feel you cannot help out at all, we would appreciate it if you could share this page and please keep us in your prayers.