After going through two long bouts with severe injuries resulting in long-term pain, I realize I’m still uncomfortable asking for help. Only when I began opening up to friends and colleagues over the past year did people begin offering to bring me food or help with my daughter and I honestly didn’t know how to respond. Finally I finally started allowing friends to bring me food now and then, and to help me with my daughter. But every day life is still a real challenge for us, so I think I’ve identified at least one easy way friends can help us directly – even from a distance.
I’ve deliberated a long time whether to ask others for donations to help us bear the burden of my medical expenses and extra childcare costs over the past four years. I kept hoping I wouldn’t need to ask people for help. But now we’re faced with losing our house over the next few months.
Essentially if I can’t come up with enough work and cut our expenses (or soften them in combination with work) over the next two months, then we have to sell our home that we worked so hard to buy. And leave the wonderful neighborhood that our daughter loves. It will take us years to get back into a comparable house given the market and our dwindling assets. Meanwhile, I’m losing time with my daughter as she nears the end of her precious first five years.
I finally have a team of excellent doctors, a trusted physical therapist and a pair of fabulous caregivers that have been a huge help to us, so I don’t think I need help finding those any more, but unfortunately due to our family’s special needs, these costs over the four year period have been excessive – beyond $150,000.
We have known friends who have gone through short periods of time where they have been hospitalized and requested assistance from other friends through non-profit websites associated with the hospitals or related organizations, but given that I never had to stay in the hospital for my treatments, I felt somehow like I couldn’t ask for that kind of help. Finally, I thought perhaps I could try a social media based fundraising application and see if that might be something that could be unobtrusive but yet for friends who really do want to find a way to help us out in our time of need, it would be a way for them to feel useful.
I have now setup a ChipIn page to test this out and see if it makes sense. (WordPress wouldn’t let me install a widget on the blog unfortunately.) I’m requesting gifts of any amount of money possible to help pay specifically for medical expenses that are not covered by insurance but that are essential to my recovery – physical therapy, medications, special testing, and new treatments.
I pay approx. $1500 a month out-of-pocket just for specialist physical therapy, most of which is not covered by insurance after a certain number of visits per year. That will be the first thing the money goes toward, so I set a goal of asking for $3000 in help from my social network and any visitors who are so kind as to assist. That will pay for physical therapy for two months until which point we will have made it through the holidays and can reassess if there’s any chance we can afford to stay in our house.
If somehow I exceed the $3000 goal, I will look for assistance with the essential childcare costs that we have been burdened with since I can’t take care of my daughter on my own. But for now, I’m starting smaller. Even $5 helps, and it will go into its own account – I have a separate checking account directly hooked to PayPal where ChipIn connects – and that money will be put directly toward physical therapy and other medical costs.
I will be eternally grateful for anyone who contributes during this difficult time. I’ve struggled a lot with whether to do this, but I finally decided that when I want to help my friends out, I prefer when they tell me how to best help them. At this time, this is the best way to help me (although meals and assisted playdates – for those of you who are local and have kids my daughter’s age – also help us save money and fulfill our daily needs), so I hope people will understand that by asking, this is my response to those who continue inquiring about how I’m feeling and what you can do. Please click here if you want to contribute – even $5 will help.
Thank you for even taking the time to read this. It was very difficult for me to write.
- Sarah
My physical therapist is a really wonderful person. I’m incredibly lucky to have found her. Both my OB/Gyn and the local pain clinic sent me to her over a year and a half ago, and she’s made my life a lot better. But once my recovery started to plateau, she referred me to a pelvic pain specialist in San Francisco who essentially finally diagnosed my problem as pudendal nerve neuralgia (aka neuropathy, stretched nerves, entrapped nerves). His recommendation: a series of massive injections.
Glancing back 16 months ago, I found a post I wrote at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, entitled “