Help us pay for our car being fixed so Brad can get to work

Hi everyone,

My name is Amanda Freeman. I am a mom to three kids (13, 6 and 5) and I live in Framingham, MA. My husband and I have been married almost 10 years and together since college.

In 2020, we moved down to Louisiana during COVID in search of a better situation for our family. We found God, and a wonderful community down there, but the job market was difficult and when my husband's job of 10 years went back to in person, he decided to separate from the company.

We then moved to Texas where the job market for IT (my husband's job field) was booming. He got a job, we found a house and thought we had found our forever home.

In November of 2022, we moved back up north after my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Finding housing was extremely difficult at that time and we moved into a winter rental in NH to be close to his job. We made friends, built a community, I even got a job that I loved. A few months later, I was diagnosed with cancer and had to stop working. By the time April 2023 came around, Bradford had to work remotely 100% of the time because I was on pain medication around the clock and couldn't take care of our children. In May of 2023, he was let go from his job because his boss said it was "unfair to the rest of the team that he gets to be working from home". In June of 2023, we moved to Framingham into my in-laws' house and lived with them. I had surgery to remove the cancer and had a great support system around me while I recovered. Brad got a new job and loved it.

In October of 2023, my in-laws moved out into an ADA accommodating apartment where they were much more comfortable, and didn't have 3 kids running around all the time. We started to get up on our feet. We started turning my husband's childhood home into our own, but then I started getting sick again. Between November 2023 and February 2024, I was in and out of the hospital because of blood clots in my lungs. Because I wasn't working, I wasn't able to pay my car note in December and my car was repossessed. In February 2024, a year after my cancer diagnosis, I was told that I would need to be on blood thinners called Elequis to keep me alive. At that point, my husband, who had been my rock and always stayed strong, took a dive mentally. He went on a leave of absence from work and we went into survival mode. He was able to focus on his stress and blood pressure issues which were really bad at that point and even started losing weight. (So far, he has lost about 50lbs!) I tried my best to be there for him, but I was still having clots. In April of 2024, I was hospitalized for almost 2 weeks with a clot in my lung that had such bad effects on me I was on oxygen for most of that time because the clot had cut off the blood supply to my bottom right quadrant of my right lung and the lung tissue died. In June, I was found to have a clot in my leg, and one in each of my lungs. At this point, I was diagnosed with Anti-phospholipid syndrome and was put on heavy blood thinners because my body had failed on the ones I was on twice.

In July, my husband was returning back to work from his leave when his ADA accommodation was rejected. Then his "return to work meeting" as soon as he was on the call, he was terminated.

In the months of July and August, I was going to food pantries for groceries and getting really creative with recipes.

Fast forward to last week. Bradford accepted a job offer and is set to begin next Tuesday. I had a banked flight in my Delta account from traveling back and forth and I used it to fly down to Louisiana to attend the funeral of a dear friend's husband.

Upon landing home in Boston, I turned on my cellular and there were messages from Bradford saying that the car was no longer working. He turned it on, put it in gear, went to hit the gas and nothing happened. It then began to shake, and stall out. We had it towed to our repair shop and he got his dad's car to come get me at the airport. They said it's the Throttle Assembly and a coolant leak. We just had it in for repair not two weeks ago because of a tie rod issue.

My husband has drained his retirement. We have not asked for assistance from people with all of the struggles we have had. We have sacrificed so I can have my blood thinners with their copay.

My husband needs the car to be able to get to his new job.

That is why I am only asking for enough money to pay the mechanic and nothing more.

Please, if you can give anything, or share this, I would appreciate it so much.