Christina Cares Fund

First we should start with an introduction; hi my name is Christina Adams, formerly Askenback. I went through a divorce in January of 2014, so some of you may still know me as my former name.  This fundraising campaign has to be one of the hardest things I have ever done. Asking for financial help is not easy for me. It is slowly chipping away at my soul, but I realized I need to do this or go forward with full on bankruptcy. And it couldn’t hurt to try this first. I will get to my full story in a moment; the most important part of my story is that I do not regret any of it. I do not regret quitting my job of 6 ½ years, my career that I truly loved, and giving up my life savings to care for my mother. We go around once in this world. And sometimes, you need to give it all up and start over. That’s OK. There is no shame in that. I am not here to say “look at me, look at how selfless I was” that is not in my MO. If I had a billion dollars tomorrow, and could have hired a million doctors and nurses to care for my mother, it still would have been me moving back into the bedroom I grew up in Norwalk CT, going with her to the doctors’ appointments, chemo treatments and radiation treatments. That is what family does. My brother would have loved to have been able to do the same thing, we just had different situations and mine lead to this decision a tiny bit easier.

The full story starts in August of 2013 when Jack Adams, my father past away suddenly. The accident was a shock to our entire family. While attending to my mother with my brothers, John & Chris and making arrangements, my apartment in Pennsylvania was robbed of all jewelry and valuables. Sadly, a loophole in my rental policy covered nothing. The personal responsible was caught, but all the items were gone and there was nothing to recoup. I lost over $10,000.

In November 2013, Lynn (my mother) was admitted to the hospital in Stamford CT with congestive heart failure. She was in the hospital and rehab for about a month, after a valve transplant, bypass and pacemaker. During this time, I continued to work my job in PA and travel at night up to CT to be with my mom and back to PA in the mornings to work. Using up PTO time to be with my mother as much as possible.

Things were going as well as possible until June of 2014. I started to experience extreme migraines that were manifesting every other day on average. With some other very odd and unpleasant side effects that had never occurred before; loss of vision, numbness. Lots of doctors’ appointments, ER visits, MRIs, CT Scans and more began. As you can imagine the medical bills began to pile up. I had health insurance, but it was an HSA with a very high deductible and a 30% co-pay for all of my procedures. (Side note, the migraines are under control, Topomax and Imitrex are amazing)

At the end of June things got worse (who would have thought!), Lynn was diagnosed with cancer. She would require surgery, chemo and radiation.

I was left with a very hard decision. Leave my mother in Connecticut by herself (don’t get me wrong, she has amazing friends, but lives by herself) to deal with surgery, and all the doctors, decisions and anxiety by herself. Or quit my job and move home to be there for her. I chose to quit my job of 6 ½ years and move home (I was actually hoping they would let me transfer to the Wilton CT office, but that didn’t happen :( ). Then, I was hoping unemployment would be an option, but the state of PA disagreed, all of my unemployment appeals have been exhausted. By now I have depleted my savings, my 401k and my IRA. Due to that robbery back in August of 2013 I mentioned, there is no jewelry to sell other than my wedding bands, which I am getting appraised to sell next week.

I truly hate asking others for help, it is a major flaw of mine. But I have reached rock bottom and have to do it. I do feel the irony in it. I have no problems helping any one out. If I have ever had an extra ticket to a concert and someone wanted to go? Not a problem if they didn’t have the cash, it was theirs; I just asked that they pay if forward sometime in the future. The thrills someone got from going to a live show was worth so much more than the cash I would have gotten for that ticket. I loved raising money to get a friend to a show across the country we’d all be going to, because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to go. It was the best feeling. I will happily donate to anyone's walk for a charity, run for cancer, polar plunges or school functions. I hate self promotion of my own giving. Even pointing out the things I have done in the past makes me want to vomit a little. The only reason I am mentioning them now is so people understand that I am not one to ask for money but have never helped out others in the past.

Would you mind doing the same for me now? If you cannot afford to help out, please post this on your Facebook wall and make it public? Tweet it, post it on any forums you may visit, or anything else you can thing of. Forward this along to friends? Anything can help at this point. We all know that being sent to collections for medical bills is no fun. And oh boy, do the collections guys and I have a cool relationship thing going on now.

Please know, that all the money raised will go to my medical bills and other bills that have incurred since my unemployment while caring for my mom. If any money is raised over the amount needed to cover that, it will be donated to helpusadopted.org, my favorite kick ass charity.

Thank you so much for reading this far, I’m impressed! Have a most excellent day. Eat, drink and be merry.