Help Molly Lucas Heal
Donation protected
My name is Kevin Lucas. My wife’s name is Molly and she is the love of my life. Molly is a strong, beautiful and loving woman who has spent most of her life caring for others. She is a wonderful wife and an awesome mother. She’s everything to me and we’ve been together for over 30 years. We dated for a couple years and got married in 1988 in Aurora, New York. We had no money and very few resources but we pulled off a wedding with all our family and friends there to celebrate our day with us, which was important to us to have our perfect wedding.
The years that followed were a special time for us. We had the most meaningful and joyful moments I could ever hope to have in my life. We enjoyed good health, wonderful friends, exciting adventures and Molly gave birth to our son who has singularly defined my purpose more than anything else in my whole life, I was now a dad. His name is Mitch and he’s a fascinating, dynamic, talented, and loving person.
We started to gain financial stability as we progressed through our careers, we were able to send our son to college, take up sailing on a small sailboat on a local lake and enjoyed a couple adventures in Central America and the British West Indies. Along the way, we also overcame several trials. We went bankrupt in the 1980’s and lost everything. Our son, Mitch needed brain surgery at one year old, Molly lost her parents, and I had an episode where I struggled with a bout of deep depression and truth be told - still deal with it on occasion. All that and the typical collection of other bumps in the road of life that most people deal with. Through it all, we had one another and that made nothing truly too big for us to overcome. We had an indomitable spirit and nothing would tip us over.
On the day after Thanksgiving 2016, all this changed. Molly suffered a stroke and due to the resultant damage, has some disability. We are now faced with losing everything again and this time for us it’s different. Molly has lost her job.
This would not be an insurmountable obstacle except that a year ago, we decided to make a change. She was working nearly 70 hours per week as a controller for a large corporation. The money was great and she had done it for years and always enjoyed her work. Now, with our son out of school and starting his own life in Albany, we decided to slow it down a little and see if we couldn’t roll things back and start enjoying our evenings and weekends together again. My career is with a not-for-profit and the pay isn’t great but we always invested ourselves in things that had meaning and I always believed that money wasn’t everything if I was doing good for people. She left her power job and took a job as a controller with a much smaller company. We took nearly a 50% cut in our income. We used our savings to buy a small house and cut back some things but it was all worth it. With this, we had some trouble paying some of our bills as we hadn't anticipated some of the expenses that ended up accumulating. Still we were on a path to catch things up and make more changes to settle into our new chapter and we were confident things would be fine.
However, her disability has left her with few or no options for a career anytime soon as she recovers. She is managing that very well with her typical fortitude. But her options are greatly diminished. After the stroke in her right parietal lobe while in the hospital, it was discovered that she also has a large aneurysm in her left occipital lobe. From the damage, she is now struggling with something called spatial neglect. This was new to me and I am learning volumes about it as we move through her recovery. I won’t go into the details of what this is as information is available all over the web on it. It should suffice to say that it has been debilitating for her. She also has some cognitive challenges and is exhausted all the time. She is at home and doing well. I am hopeful and remaining positive for a nearly full recovery at some point in the future. Now it’s about low stress, recovery and focusing on getting better.
The House:
We had a lease with option contract with the owner of our home that said we need to secure a mortgage through a bank within five years. That deadline is this year and we will not be able to do this on one income. Because we were late with January’s payment and short with both that payment as well as February, coupled with Molly’s prospects for employment being reduced, the owner decided not to give us back our original down payment of $13,000 from five years ago that was to go towards the purchase price, and evict us. We found this out on January 30th and need to be out of our house by February 28th. In fairness, the owner was well within her right to decide not to give us the deposit back as it was spelled out in the original contract. She has bills too. The total amount needed in order to stay in this house and move forward safely with healing, surgeries, recovery and job searches is $128,500.
Medical Bills:
With Molly losing her job, I needed to move her over to my insurance at work. To do this nearly tripled our health insurance cost per month. This expense is now over $700 per month. There are now some very expensive items relating to Molly’s stroke including many CT scans, MRI’s, hospital stay in ICU, and much more. Even with insurance, the co-pay’s for these have been very high. The current amount due for the existing medical bills to Crouse, Upstate, the neurosurgeon, occupational and physical therapy, and multiple follow-ups is approximately $7300. I am not solid on this amount yet as I’m still waiting for some of the more recent procedures to be billed to find out what the insurance will cover. I’m expecting these items to total around $500 - $1000 and this doesn't include the future procedures she will need such as surgery, follow-ups, MRI’s, angiogram(s) and physical therapy. All together this will likely be about $8000 - $9000.
The Cars:
We had four cars. One that was not running but was slated to be repaired. One for her to get back and forth from work, one for me for the same purpose and one for our son who is working in Albany starting his own life after college. All but one of these cars had liens on them. We’ve currently sold one that did not have a lien to pay vital bills. We sold a second that did have a lien and paid the lien off to reduce our monthly outflow. Of the remaining two, Molly and I share one and our son has the other one in Albany. We’ve talked to him about this and he understands we will have to sell that car. He is completely understanding and has no problem taking the bus to work. We’ve felt bad about this and haven’t let him know the severity of our situation until now. He was eager to let us take the car back. Once that is done, it will be sold and the lien reduced by what-ever amount we can get for it. In all, our monthly car payments are $711. Our total owed is $10,870. We will likely not get the full amount owed on the one car when we sell it. We need to keep one car as we do not live anywhere near a bus route and Molly has consistent follow-up appointments and procedures and I have to work. We are looking at selling the one remaining car and paying cash for something cheaper but simply don’t have the funds to do that.
The years that followed were a special time for us. We had the most meaningful and joyful moments I could ever hope to have in my life. We enjoyed good health, wonderful friends, exciting adventures and Molly gave birth to our son who has singularly defined my purpose more than anything else in my whole life, I was now a dad. His name is Mitch and he’s a fascinating, dynamic, talented, and loving person.
We started to gain financial stability as we progressed through our careers, we were able to send our son to college, take up sailing on a small sailboat on a local lake and enjoyed a couple adventures in Central America and the British West Indies. Along the way, we also overcame several trials. We went bankrupt in the 1980’s and lost everything. Our son, Mitch needed brain surgery at one year old, Molly lost her parents, and I had an episode where I struggled with a bout of deep depression and truth be told - still deal with it on occasion. All that and the typical collection of other bumps in the road of life that most people deal with. Through it all, we had one another and that made nothing truly too big for us to overcome. We had an indomitable spirit and nothing would tip us over.
On the day after Thanksgiving 2016, all this changed. Molly suffered a stroke and due to the resultant damage, has some disability. We are now faced with losing everything again and this time for us it’s different. Molly has lost her job.
This would not be an insurmountable obstacle except that a year ago, we decided to make a change. She was working nearly 70 hours per week as a controller for a large corporation. The money was great and she had done it for years and always enjoyed her work. Now, with our son out of school and starting his own life in Albany, we decided to slow it down a little and see if we couldn’t roll things back and start enjoying our evenings and weekends together again. My career is with a not-for-profit and the pay isn’t great but we always invested ourselves in things that had meaning and I always believed that money wasn’t everything if I was doing good for people. She left her power job and took a job as a controller with a much smaller company. We took nearly a 50% cut in our income. We used our savings to buy a small house and cut back some things but it was all worth it. With this, we had some trouble paying some of our bills as we hadn't anticipated some of the expenses that ended up accumulating. Still we were on a path to catch things up and make more changes to settle into our new chapter and we were confident things would be fine.
However, her disability has left her with few or no options for a career anytime soon as she recovers. She is managing that very well with her typical fortitude. But her options are greatly diminished. After the stroke in her right parietal lobe while in the hospital, it was discovered that she also has a large aneurysm in her left occipital lobe. From the damage, she is now struggling with something called spatial neglect. This was new to me and I am learning volumes about it as we move through her recovery. I won’t go into the details of what this is as information is available all over the web on it. It should suffice to say that it has been debilitating for her. She also has some cognitive challenges and is exhausted all the time. She is at home and doing well. I am hopeful and remaining positive for a nearly full recovery at some point in the future. Now it’s about low stress, recovery and focusing on getting better.
The House:
We had a lease with option contract with the owner of our home that said we need to secure a mortgage through a bank within five years. That deadline is this year and we will not be able to do this on one income. Because we were late with January’s payment and short with both that payment as well as February, coupled with Molly’s prospects for employment being reduced, the owner decided not to give us back our original down payment of $13,000 from five years ago that was to go towards the purchase price, and evict us. We found this out on January 30th and need to be out of our house by February 28th. In fairness, the owner was well within her right to decide not to give us the deposit back as it was spelled out in the original contract. She has bills too. The total amount needed in order to stay in this house and move forward safely with healing, surgeries, recovery and job searches is $128,500.
Medical Bills:
With Molly losing her job, I needed to move her over to my insurance at work. To do this nearly tripled our health insurance cost per month. This expense is now over $700 per month. There are now some very expensive items relating to Molly’s stroke including many CT scans, MRI’s, hospital stay in ICU, and much more. Even with insurance, the co-pay’s for these have been very high. The current amount due for the existing medical bills to Crouse, Upstate, the neurosurgeon, occupational and physical therapy, and multiple follow-ups is approximately $7300. I am not solid on this amount yet as I’m still waiting for some of the more recent procedures to be billed to find out what the insurance will cover. I’m expecting these items to total around $500 - $1000 and this doesn't include the future procedures she will need such as surgery, follow-ups, MRI’s, angiogram(s) and physical therapy. All together this will likely be about $8000 - $9000.
The Cars:
We had four cars. One that was not running but was slated to be repaired. One for her to get back and forth from work, one for me for the same purpose and one for our son who is working in Albany starting his own life after college. All but one of these cars had liens on them. We’ve currently sold one that did not have a lien to pay vital bills. We sold a second that did have a lien and paid the lien off to reduce our monthly outflow. Of the remaining two, Molly and I share one and our son has the other one in Albany. We’ve talked to him about this and he understands we will have to sell that car. He is completely understanding and has no problem taking the bus to work. We’ve felt bad about this and haven’t let him know the severity of our situation until now. He was eager to let us take the car back. Once that is done, it will be sold and the lien reduced by what-ever amount we can get for it. In all, our monthly car payments are $711. Our total owed is $10,870. We will likely not get the full amount owed on the one car when we sell it. We need to keep one car as we do not live anywhere near a bus route and Molly has consistent follow-up appointments and procedures and I have to work. We are looking at selling the one remaining car and paying cash for something cheaper but simply don’t have the funds to do that.
Organizer and beneficiary
Katie MacIntyre
Organizer
Mottville, NY
Kevin Lucas
Beneficiary
