The past year has been a rough one on my health and our finances. In November of 2022 I came down with a severe case of RSV and was on bedrest for close to 3 weeks. I missed work the whole month and an extra week into December. Then in January, over New Years, my husband and I both caught COVID. Once again I was very sick and out of work for another 2 weeks. Then, the end of January, for my 50th birthday we were supposed to fly out to Florida to visit our best friends. Unfortunately, the day before we were supposed to leave I ended up in the ER with severe leg pain, only to find out that I had a very large DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis – or in simple terms, a severe blood clot) that ran from just above my ankle to mid-thigh – the doctors think this was due to both the RSV and the COVID. I was admitted to the hospital for 4 days and was treated with high doses of IV blood thinners which later turned to oral pills. I again missed close to a month of work.
At that time, I was put on a medication that was costing us close to $300 a month, with our insurances (my husband’s work insurance and my Medicare insurance) – without insurance it would be $2000 a month. It was quite the leap on the $1100 I already spend each month on all of my medications. Go forward a month and my husband decided to take a new job, with close to the same income, but way better benefits. Unfortunately, that meant we would lose his insurance for 6 months and I would be relying on just my Medicare for that time. However, Medicare did not cover most of my meds. So my cost of medication went from about $1500 a month to close to $3500 a month. The blood thinners were the to $2000 alone. At that time, we had a small amount of money that we had from an insurance claim from a year previous that was saved up to pay off a shower that got replaced but did not need to be paid off at the time. But that money did not last long.
We now thankfully have a great medical insurance coverage, but are left with a deep debt from the past few months, between the money we used that was supposed to pay off our shower and the medical bills that have added up aside from medications. My goal is to raise at least $60,000 to $75,000 so that we can pay off those debts.