I am a 37 year old teacher, wife, and mother to three wonderful little kids. 2 months after our youngest was born, just over a year ago, my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer. After a terrifying 3 months, he was on the road to recovery. He had brain surgery, chemo, and radiation, as well as the chance to be a part of a clinical trial at NIH.
We are AMAZINGLY blessed in that he seems to be cancer free and doing wonderfully. Most people with GBM's do not live much longer than a year.
Normally, I am the main "bread winner" in the family, but he coaches and brings in a little money here and there on a somewhat regular basis. However, he was unable to work for quite some time as he underwent treatment and then recovered. I ended up needing to go through bankruptcy since at the same time, I had run out of paid leave because I had used it up for my maternity leave.
Now, our oldest is in kindergarten, our middle child starts preschool next week, and we have a Honda Oddyssey sitting and rotting in front of our house- the transmission is shot. One of the student's in my class last year had a father who is a mechanic- he towed it to his garage 45 minutes away and was able to replace spark plugs free of charge. He was willing to help with the transmission- no charge for labor! But we have no way of saving the money even to get a used one. Plus now two of the tires are flat, it still needs a timing belt, and I have no credit cards or credit to help. Now that school is back in session, I am getting pay checks again, but no one will/can do a payment plan!
The truck we currently drive also needs a timing belt and the breaks have been getting worse and worse on it. Both vehicles are too old and have too much mileage for us to qualify for any help through any programs we have found or that were suggested to us when I contacted our Patient Advocate manager at Livestrong. I make too much to qualify as "low income" and not enough to actually afford what we need. Last month, to pay our rent, we needed to take a loan out from the local teacher's credit union.
If someone knows a way for us to finance these big repairs so that we have two running, safe vehicles so that I can take my son to school with me, and my husband can bring our daughter to school in the opposite direction, PLEASE let me know!! We can make payments during the school year (the summers are very hard for us financially). Thank you for reading my story.
