Get on level ground

Five years ago, my wife went in for a hysterectomy and during the operation, they nicked the bowl. After eight surgeries and 65 days, she came out of the hospital with an ileostomy bag.During this timeI had to quit my job to stay home and take care of four of our children. Three of these children have mental issues that make it difficult for us to get help with their care.

After her three month stay at the hospital she was in need of round the clock care. This could not be done by anyone else than me, being that if her bag broke or leaked, I was the only one that could change it. This meant that I was going to have to not work and stay at home to take care of her and the kids.

About a year ago she had the operation to take the bag off and she was normal again, although still in need of assistance with everyday life. A couple of months ago she was well enough for me to return back to work. She was originally supposed to get the bag off after one year, the surgeon refused to do it and she had to have it for four years.

When I went back to work, we thought that our lives would get better. We thought that with her health better and me being back to work, our lives would start over. My wife had been though so much mental, emotional, and physical pain, that she deserved to be happy for a while, But once I went back to work, we found out the financial damage caused by a botched hysterectomy .

For four years we had been living off of her and my sons SSI, and this was not much. We had to do what we had to do to make it through the hard times. We started to get into debt, and slowly in compounded and became bigger than we realized. We could not change what was happening. We knew that we were getting deeper into debt, but I couldn't work and our family had to have heat and electricity and the normal necessities in life. We also went into debt just making it to doctors visits over two hours away. We thought that once I was back to work, we could catch back up and go on with our lives, we were wrong.

We compounded so much debt, that almost everything that I work for, goes directly into paying back debt. Even me holding down three jobs, leaves us with close to nothing to live on. We have tried to consolidate everything, but everyone we have called has refused to help us.

We are lost, we are in a corner, and we can not, for our children's sake, throw in the towel. Everything we have, we are about to loose. We do not expect to pay off all of our debts right away, we just want to be able to see dry land. I have no problem paying what we owe, but we owe so much and we have reached a point were we do not know what to do.

My family has been through so much in the last five years. I am trying as hard as I can to get us back on level ground. I know that everyone has debt, but we cannot get out of the situation that we are in. We have no way out.

I hate asking anyone for anything, but as a father, a husband, and a man I am asking for help.