Tweet
To catch you up, my husband is blind with end stage kidney disease. I also have a teenage daughter who had recently moved back in with me the last time I was here. We live in a major metro area and rent.
My husband has been on dialysis since Nov 2015. He is still working and getting a full salary but he has to work from home sometimes and flex his schedule a lot. This upcoming Monday I am donating my left kidney to him. There is a new desensitization procedure they are using since we are not a blood type or tissue match. That procedure costs around 30k. We have an individual out of pocket maximum of $2600 though, so they can remove his eyes and put in cameras for all I care. As long as insurance approves it, the total cost is very little in the grand scheme. We will see what happens in the next four years though, with the ACA in severe peril. My husband works for a health insurance company.
In less positive news, my daughter told me in May of last year that her father had regularly sexually abused her while she lived with him. He is now in jail awaiting trial. Trial is currently scheduled for mid May, though it could possibly be continued again. It's in another state and she and I will have to fly there for it. The state pays for some of those costs, but not missed work. It's looking very very likely he will be convicted and if so he will not be getting out, ever. I contacted a family law attorney about terminating his parental rights, and it will cost about 4k. We are spending a lot of money on family therapy, which is not covered by insurance. My daughter has had a lot of mental health and behavioral problems due to the abuse. She has been hospitalized twice.
I have short term disability to cover my time off work after the transplant, though it pays out about 1000 less per month than I bring home. We can put all of our retirement contributions on hold while we are out, and have already put our gym memberships on hold. That saves us a bit over $700 a month. We'll also be forgoing eating out and making most meals from scratch during that time. I have the freezer totally full of pre-made food and we'll use the crock pot a lot. We also managed to save $1400 to help bridge the gap, and we should have some amount of tax refund coming this year, but my husband hasn't completed the taxes yet.
However, in the good news/bad news pile: my husband's dad died last fall, very unexpectedly. He had a retirement account he had not even touched yet. It was split between him and his two sisters and after paying funeral expenses and taxes we had about $21,000 left. We paid off several credit cards, and put $8000 into savings which we should not need to use after the surgery unless something unforseen comes up. We are not debt free, as I still have a federal student loan, and we still have a couple credit cards with balances, but that will free up more money each month to get those paid down more quickly. I did pay off a $5000 private student loan last fall as well.
So that's what has been going on. Good be better, could be worse. I'm pretty much getting used to everything in my life being hugely expensive, but at least we were able to catch a breath with the inherited money.
My husband has been on dialysis since Nov 2015. He is still working and getting a full salary but he has to work from home sometimes and flex his schedule a lot. This upcoming Monday I am donating my left kidney to him. There is a new desensitization procedure they are using since we are not a blood type or tissue match. That procedure costs around 30k. We have an individual out of pocket maximum of $2600 though, so they can remove his eyes and put in cameras for all I care. As long as insurance approves it, the total cost is very little in the grand scheme. We will see what happens in the next four years though, with the ACA in severe peril. My husband works for a health insurance company.
In less positive news, my daughter told me in May of last year that her father had regularly sexually abused her while she lived with him. He is now in jail awaiting trial. Trial is currently scheduled for mid May, though it could possibly be continued again. It's in another state and she and I will have to fly there for it. The state pays for some of those costs, but not missed work. It's looking very very likely he will be convicted and if so he will not be getting out, ever. I contacted a family law attorney about terminating his parental rights, and it will cost about 4k. We are spending a lot of money on family therapy, which is not covered by insurance. My daughter has had a lot of mental health and behavioral problems due to the abuse. She has been hospitalized twice.
I have short term disability to cover my time off work after the transplant, though it pays out about 1000 less per month than I bring home. We can put all of our retirement contributions on hold while we are out, and have already put our gym memberships on hold. That saves us a bit over $700 a month. We'll also be forgoing eating out and making most meals from scratch during that time. I have the freezer totally full of pre-made food and we'll use the crock pot a lot. We also managed to save $1400 to help bridge the gap, and we should have some amount of tax refund coming this year, but my husband hasn't completed the taxes yet.
However, in the good news/bad news pile: my husband's dad died last fall, very unexpectedly. He had a retirement account he had not even touched yet. It was split between him and his two sisters and after paying funeral expenses and taxes we had about $21,000 left. We paid off several credit cards, and put $8000 into savings which we should not need to use after the surgery unless something unforseen comes up. We are not debt free, as I still have a federal student loan, and we still have a couple credit cards with balances, but that will free up more money each month to get those paid down more quickly. I did pay off a $5000 private student loan last fall as well.
So that's what has been going on. Good be better, could be worse. I'm pretty much getting used to everything in my life being hugely expensive, but at least we were able to catch a breath with the inherited money.
Comment