Help Homeless Family of Disabled Teacher with MCAS

Hi, my name is Jill. My husband is a disabled former teacher, and I am a disabled former postal clerk. We are a family of 5. We just lost our home due to foreclosure, and we have run out of places to stay. My husband spends 95% of his day in bed using an oxygen concentrator. He lives with Trigeminal Neuralgia pain every day. EDS causes him a lot of joint pain and muscle pain. When he is up, his heart rate can increase to 200 bpm from POTS. His blood pressure has averaged 185/105 for almost a year. When he goes to the doctor his blood pressure is around 195/115, and he has been told he could have a stroke any day with blood pressure that high. No blood pressure medication has worked. MCAS prevents him from tolerating the prescriptions he needs to take for blood pressure, POTS, and hypothyroidism. His hypothyroidism was caused by thyroid cancer about 10 years ago. MCAS prevents him from tolerating so many foods. Triggering symptoms of MCAS gives him varying symptoms of anaphylaxis. Every day is a struggle for him, and he has been suffering for a long time. We need to find a home and I don’t know how we can do that without help. His doctors have told us he needs to see doctors out of state as soon as possible. We need to find a home that puts us closer to where he needs to be to get the treatment he needs. He cannot travel without a great deal of pain and discomfort. Here is our story.

The short version:

We lost our home to foreclosure in May, and we have been finding temporary places to stay with the savings we had left. We are running out of money and time. I was injured at work 18 years ago, and I am now on disability. The damage caused by my injury was not able to be repaired surgically. My husband became disabled 15 years ago. He was born with a mast cell disorder that went undiagnosed until recently. The side effects of the mast cell disorder caused many of his other medical conditions to be worse. He has lived with trigeminal neuralgia pain every day of his life after pharmacological and surgical interventions only made him worse. Another name for trigeminal neuralgia is "suicide disease" because many patients with this disorder commit suicide. The pain is too difficult to live with. He cannot tolerate most drugs due to the mast cell disorder, so he has not been able to treat many of his other conditions. After having thyroid cancer, he cannot tolerate the thyroid medications he needs. His blood pressure is at the level of hypertensive crisis, but no blood pressure medication will work. He has several other rare disorders that might have been caused by his DES exposure in utero. He currently is being treated by a cardiologist, a neurologist, an immunologist, an endocrinologist, and a pain specialist, to name a few. They help, but there is no cure for what he has, so the goal has been to treat symptoms to try to improve his quality of life. He was just finishing a doctoral degree in education when he became disabled. He was an educator and would love to go back to work someday, but that has never happened.

We are asking for help to find a home. I don’t even know how much to ask for. We have always found it difficult to ask for help. This is truly our last resort. We are having trouble finding a rental due to our low income, yet we do not qualify for any kind of aid. The poverty threshold in our state is very low. I receive disability, but my husband does not. He did not qualify for disability because he paid into the state retirement program as an educator. In that program, an employee must become disabled while they are working. My husband left his job to have surgeries, surgeries we thought would work. When the surgeries did not work and made him worse, he became disabled. He only got worse with time, due to the mast cell disorder that was going untreated for so much of his life. Since he left his job, he did not qualify for disability even though he worked in his career for over 15 years.

We want to use the funds to find a place to live. We are hoping that, with enough help to put money down on a home, we could get a mortgage for a small home. If we can't get enough to do that, then we will use the money to rent something we can afford. We have good credit, just not enough income for a mortgage with no down payment. COVID extended the process, so the foreclosure has already been removed from our credit. The 7-year time period has just passed. The only problem with our credit is the debt-to-income ratio. At this point, we have one week left for our short-term rental, and after that, we do not have enough to rent anymore. We have no place to go. Please contact me with any questions I can answer.

The LONG version:

All of our problems began in 1969 when my mother-in-law was prescribed a synthetic estrogen, DES, in the hopes it would save her from needing a hysterectomy after a very traumatic and damaging stillbirth. She was told she could no longer have children, but the drug was safe during pregnancy and was thought to prevent miscarriage. Within months she was pregnant with my husband. Since she was told she could no longer get pregnant, she didn’t think she was pregnant right away, but after giving birth five times, she knew the signs. She was very adamant about not taking any drugs during pregnancy. Even though DES was considered to be safe during pregnancy, she stopped taking it immediately when she realized she was pregnant. She had taken the drug for several months, and my husband was exposed to it in utero for at least eight to ten weeks. There was one unusual event during the pregnancy. My husband was born four weeks early, to the day, and was still six pounds and twelve ounces. He was not underweight considering the shortened gestational period.

Soon after his birth, he started showing problems with reactions to many things, allergic reactions. He had skin allergies to soaps and detergents. He couldn’t tolerate latex, especially latex nipples on bottles. His mother had to have that hysterectomy right after he was born, so there was no chance she could breastfeed, even though during that period, many women were encouraged to believe that formula was better for a baby than breast milk. After approximately four to six weeks, he had to be fed from a cup. He refused the latex nipple, but they didn’t know why at the time. He had to have satin sheets, or he would break out in a rash. He clearly had allergies. Even during the pregnancy, his mother always told the story of how she needed nasal drops to help her breath during the pregnancy. After he was born, she no longer needed the nasal drops. All of her symptoms stopped after she delivered him.

I met my husband when he was 24. During those first 24 years, he had allergy shots and went on several medications for allergies. He had other medical issues he just lived with, thinking they were just normal for him. He had no idea he was a DES baby at that point. His parents just thought he had aggressive allergies and asthma. He did have a sleeping problem, a digestive problem, and migraines. He never saw a doctor about any of those issues. He barely had any scars, but the scars he had were odd. They were strophic scars. The migraines he experienced were typical as a young adult, but throughout his life, he complained of migraine-type pain in his face, around his temple, behind his eye, in his cheek, and jaw. The pain was always one-sided, and intense and debilitating when he had it. His mother also experienced both that type of pain and regular migraines.

After we were married, he started to go to a doctor regularly. When the facial pain was bad, he had high blood pressure. Of course, the doctor said he must have “white coat syndrome” or he was nervous about being a newlywed. Both of those were completely false. His symptoms began to worsen in his late twenties. His sleeping problems were getting worse, his facial pain and migraines were worse, and he was having a lot of problems taking prescription medications. He was having a lot of severe reactions to almost every medication he was prescribed, even herbs and supplements. He was having problems with antibiotics, pain medications, and many others. His doctor was not very patient either. He even started to accuse him of just having a psychological problem, because he couldn’t understand what he had wrong with him. Must be psychological because of all of his complaints about not tolerating medications.

He was referred to a neurologist who was accustomed to dealing with difficult cases. This doctor tried everything. He tried every drug he knew of to help him with his facial pain, and he was able to diagnose what he had. My husband was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, migraines, cluster headaches, and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). This was about the time he found out he was exposed to DES. When my mother-in-law realized how many problems he was having, she learned more about the DES she had taken, and she told my husband that she was afraid that the DES might have caused problems for him. My husband is the youngest in his family. He has four older siblings, all are 9-13 years older than him, and none of them had the types of medical issues my husband was having, aside from migraines. Now, my husband started asking questions about his DES exposure.

At first, his primary care doctor told him not to worry about his DES exposure. He knew men who were exposed to it and had no problems. My husband received a 2003 report from the CDC about DES exposure. He shared it with his doctors. His doctors began to change their minds. The CDC does not have much information about the symptoms of DES exposure in men, but my husband had most of the agreed-upon side effects. All of which are not too serious, and mostly deal with reproduction. At that time, we had two sons, so he was not sterile like some men can be from exposure to the DES. The frustrating part about the CDC report is the lack of information. From what we have learned, the drug manufacturer rushed the drug to market and did not perform the proper studies on the drug. Plus, since the length of exposure, dosage, and many other variables are different for everyone, determining side effects is not statistically accurate. For example, the DES-exposed population has a higher percentage of autoimmune disorders, but not one autoimmune disorder can be isolated. It is just that the people exposed to DES tend to have autoimmune disorders more than the people who aren’t exposed to DES, but they can’t narrow it down to any one autoimmune disorder.

After trying every drug for his facial pain, and not being able to tolerate any of them, his neurologist referred him to Boston, Massachusetts for experimental surgery for his pain. Doctors had begun to use peripheral nerve stimulators, that are designed for the back, on the cranial nerves of the face and head. They wanted to implant a nerve stimulator in his chest and have the leads go to the left side of his face. The stimulator would send an electrical charge to the nerves causing the pain every few seconds. Since nerves process sensations before pain, the stimulator would give the nerve a feeling that it was being touched, and not give it time to process the feeling of the pain.

He had to go through several rhizotomies and nerve blocks to single out the nerves branching off the trigeminal nerve that was causing the most pain. Next, they implanted the generator and the first lead, which went to the Supra orbital nerve located just above the center of his left eye. At first, it worked great, but there was a major problem, really a flaw. The lead was designed for the back, and it could move around a small amount and still target the nerve. For his nerve, the lead couldn’t move or it wouldn’t hit the nerve anymore. He had several revisions to replace the lead over the nerve. Every time they had to operate, his pain got worse and worse. We didn’t know why that was happening, yet.

During one of his revisions, the partner of his regular surgeon decided he wanted to perform the revision. This was a huge mistake. When he woke up from the surgery, the lead was placed inches away from where it was supposed to be. He was devastated when he realized this. The nurse rushed to get the surgeon. She was sure he would take him back into surgery and fix it right away. Well, the surgeon said he would have to schedule another surgery date to fix it. The surgeon was arrogant and had no remorse. Keep in mind, that we lived two hours from Boston. Every time we had to go for his surgeries, it was very difficult for us in many ways. We had young children, and no family in the area, and his need for these surgeries had already caused many financial problems for us. He couldn’t stay employed during the surgeries and our income was very limited.

We found him a new surgeon. He wouldn’t let the surgeon who made the mistake operate on him again. The manufacturer of the device recommended a new surgeon. It took time, but he was able to see the new surgeon. In the meantime, he was living with the lead in a part of his face where he didn’t have pain before, but now he did have pain there. Even today, he still has pain in that part of his face. In the beginning, the new surgeon appeared to be much better, but that was short-lived. He performed two more revisions. The pain was getting much worse, and this surgeon kept pushing him to take more and more pain medication, pain medication that he would help him get off once the stimulator was functioning properly. This was just before the opioid epidemic in this country.

When the two revisions failed, his new surgeon told us that he needed a lead that had “barbs” on it, like barbed wire. The theory was that scar tissue would form around the barbs and hold the lead in place. He said it might take another year for that to be developed, and he just wanted my husband to wait. There was another problem though. His body started to react to the wiring in his neck and the lead on his face. He developed granulomas. It was like his body was trying to push out the lead and the wiring in his body. Years prior he had screws put in his knee for an ACL reconstruction. The same thing happened then. The screws were being pushed out of his knee from inside the bone. Even his orthopedic surgeon said he had never seen that before. He had to have the hardware in his knee removed. By the time they did it, you could see one of the screws starting to push through the skin. This was part of that weird reaction he had to medications, and now foreign bodies inside of him.

With the nerve stimulator, the plastic surgeon who worked with the neurologist who did his last few revisions had advised that the stimulator be removed. He was having too many reactions to it being inside of him. His surgeon refused to remove it. He gave him 30 days of pain medication and “fired” him from his practice. He had to beg the plastic surgeon to remove it, which he reluctantly agreed to. It just wasn’t a surgery the plastic surgeon normally performed. Well, there was still one last problem with the removal of everything to do with the nerve stimulator. When the plastic surgeon removed it, he left in the wire insulation that went from his chest to his temple on the left side of his face. You could see the insulation popping out of one of the granulomas on his neck. His primary care doctor could feel it and see it. He went in for another surgery to have the insulation removed. When he came out of the surgery, the doctor came and talked to me. He told me that there was nothing there, just some scar tissue. He lied just to protect himself legally. When I saw my husband after the surgery, all the tension from his chest to his face was gone. You couldn’t see the insulation sticking out of his neck anymore. The surgeon never followed up with my husband, and he didn’t even try to see him after the surgery. We weren’t even blaming anyone. We just wanted it removed. He didn’t need to lie. It was more insulting that he was willing to lie just to protect himself and the hospital. His primary care doctor told him he would testify to the fact that he saw the insulation still in his body before the surgery. We just let it go. We were also dealing with the fact that he needed a doctor to help him with his pain. Pain that was so much worse than when the surgeries began. He was also physically dependent on opioids to manage his pain.

Trigeminal neuralgia has a nickname, the suicide disease. So many people who have it, kill themselves because the pain is so intense and unrelenting that they cannot live with it. An eye doctor my husband went to told him how several of the cadavers from her gross anatomy class in medical school were suicides from trigeminal neuralgia. I was a little bewildered that she shared that with him, but he felt that she understood some of what he was living with since she knew about the disorder. At this point, the opioids were the only thing helping him tolerate the pain, not remove it, just be able to tolerate it. Without it, I am very certain he wouldn’t survive the pain. When he was given a thirty-day supply and forced to find a new doctor, things got a little crazy.

First, it was so hard to find a doctor to take him as a patient. No one in the area we live in understood how to treat TN. We soon realized we needed to find a doctor who would at the least prescribe pain medication for him. This was still before the opioid epidemic, but it was getting close. At that time, the medical community in our area believed that a pain management doctor was to prescribe pain medication for chronic pain, especially palliative care patients. Primary care doctors did not prescribe opioids in our area. Well, he ran out of the 30-day supply a week before he could get an appointment with a doctor who would take him. Luckily, his primary care doctor worked hard to find someone for him. Still, he was a week short and not only did his pain come flooding back, the withdrawals began. First, he went to rehab, but they rejected him. He was told that he had to find a doctor because he was not an addict. They would not give him a spot at rehab, because an addict will need it and they cannot take it away from a potential addict. They told him to go to the ER. He went to the ER and was just about thrown out. They just treated him like a drug addict. They gave him a 24-hour supply and told him to never return for pain, “or else”. At that point, his primary care doctor reluctantly gave him a six-day supply so he could make it to his appointment with the pain clinic doctor.

All the pain clinic doctors could do was prescribe pain medication. There was nothing new that he hadn’t tried for his pain condition. Things didn’t get worse until the opioid epidemic hit. Many doctors in our area were leaving the practice. He was already traveling over an hour to get to the pain clinic doctors. He had to change doctors and practices many times. Most of the doctors were understanding and continued to prescribe. That is, until the current doctor he has. He sees the only doctor left in the area, and it is difficult to get into the practice. He was treated like a drug seeker. The thing is, he is very careful about how he uses his pain medications. He has not increased in many years, and the only reason for his last increase was due to a kidney stone that was stuck for 9 months. After he passed the stone, he decreased back to what helped him. Oh yeah, he has had kidney stones four times now. Stones that were triggered by trying new medications for his pain.

Things went on like this for several years without much change. His pain would fluctuate, but there was no visible pattern to the worsening of his pain. He would just tolerate increased pain because he would not increase his pain medication. He didn’t want his body to adapt to higher levels of the drug. He did have other medical issues getting worse. A lot of joint pain, digestive tract pain and issues, breathing issues, and allergies were getting much worse. He also had to have a thyroid lobectomy due to a cancerous lump in his thyroid. After the lobectomy, he developed hypothyroidism and eventually Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. The big problem was he couldn’t tolerate synthetic thyroxin or the pills made from pig’s thyroids ground up. He has to live with the symptoms of having low T3/T4 levels.

Finally, in 2021, we found out what has been causing most of his problems from birth. He was diagnosed with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). Whenever he is exposed to histamines, through food, by prescription drugs, or even through things touching his skin, he begins to go into stages of anaphylaxis. His throat would get tight, his breathing would get labored, and he would have stomach pain, muscle pain, joint pain, skin rashes, and a lot of inflammation, everywhere. One of the big side effects of MCAS is not being able to tolerate medications. There are different stages he goes through that can last up to days long. Every time he is exposed to histamines, a new episode begins, so he is living in many stages all at once. He was given one prescription, cromolyn sodium, a mast cell stabilizer. That is when so much changed, and we finally had the answers he had been looking for since he was a child.

The MCAS was causing a lot of inflammation. Two things that have a lot of histamines are chocolate and tomatoes. Even if he has a small amount of chocolate, he can feel the symptoms begin in less than a minute. It seems like inflammation affects him a lot. He can feel his hands tighten up quickly like he can’t make a fist. Trigeminal neuralgia is believed to cause so much pain because the blood vessels close to the trigeminal nerve get inflamed or dilated making the circumference of the blood vessel larger causing it to rub against the nerve. All that rubbing wears away at the outer layer of the nerve until it begins to expose the nerve and trigger the pain. We now believe that inflammation caused by MCAS since birth has worsened his trigeminal neuralgia. His mother has trigeminal neuralgia, one of our sons has it, and some of his maternal ancestors have it as well, but none have had it as badly as my husband. Even all those times he had surgeries, we believe it got worse because of all the inflammation he was having from the undiagnosed MCAS being triggered by medications and just by operating in the area of the damaged nerve.

MCAS patients usually have other rare disorders. It is common for patients to have a certain “trifecta” of rare medical disorders. One of which is POTS, which he was diagnosed with many years ago. The third is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), which is a connective tissue disorder. There are several types of it. Most are not life-threatening, but they are life-altering, and many don’t negatively affect people until they grow older. Turns out, he has one of the types of EDS, which affects the joints and skin mostly. Remember when I wrote about him having atrophic scars, that is one of the symptoms. Joint hyperflection and soft sensitive skin is another side effect of EDS he has had since birth. Everything is finally fitting together. A far stretch from the early doctor he had who claimed his symptoms were psychological.

The mast cell stabilizer has changed so much for him. His skin is no longer inflamed and thick. He says it’s like he has “normal” skin for the first time in his life. It doesn’t itch as much as it used to. The rashes are less frequent. His throat doesn’t close up as much. He used to cough every time he ate because it felt like he was choking. Now it has improved. The pain in his stomach improved, as well as the swelling and bloating. There are almost too many changes to list. There was one surprise change that many of his doctors were shocked about, even hard to believe.

Six months before he started the mast cell stabilizer, he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. His A1C was 7.5, and 6.5 or higher was considered diabetic. Then he began the mast cell stabilizer. Within a few months, his next A1C test was 6.4. A few months later, it went down to 5.7, which was considered normal. It has stayed around 5.7 or below since then. The change was not due to weight loss or diet change. It has now been two years with no increase in his A1C.

For a while, he felt really good, compared to how he used to feel. Things changed quickly with the pandemic. He tested positive for COVID-19 early on, but he had no symptoms. He was tested only because he was having a surgical procedure and it was mandatory to be tested before the procedure. He never developed any problems and a week later, he tested negative. When the vaccine came out, he received the vaccine and all of the boosters. Then, in 2022, he started to have problems. His POTS got much worse, and his blood pressure became extremely high. Since 2022, his blood pressure averages around 190/110. This was new. He never had problems like this before, unless he was stressed by over-exerting himself. Even at rest, his blood pressure remains extremely high.

It took a while to get in to see a cardiologist. He tried many, many blood pressure medications, but they all triggered really bad mast cell activation symptoms. His heart rate would increase even more, or he would have severe chest pain or severe GI problems from the medications. He even tried to live with some of the mast cell activation symptoms, but it didn’t matter, the medications did not lower his blood pressure.

One of his healthcare professionals told him to look into “long vax”, which we learned was a newer concept that some people are having reactions to the COVID vaccination, and they are calling it long vax, similar to long COVID. Ironically, we found that the reactions a small group of vaccinated people are having are very similar to his new symptoms. One symptom of long vax is POTS and the other is unusual changes in blood pressure. Now we are not sure if what he has is this long vax, but it is very suspicious because of when it happened and his symptoms. His cardiologist keeps telling him he is going to have a stroke, but she can’t help him, because she can only prescribe the medications he is having horrible reactions to and they are not helping his blood pressure even if he pushes and tries to live with the horrible symptoms.

We need to get him to doctors out of state. We are constantly told that he needs to see a specialist in Massachusetts, but we can’t get him in there in our current financial situation. A few of his family members helped in the past, some a lot, but they can no longer offer any kind of help. The person who really helped a great deal and is still alive is his mother, but she has dementia, so she is now in a place where she needs help. He doesn’t even have emotional support from his family, except for a couple of extended relatives who would help if they could, but don’t have the means to help.

My husband worked as a teacher for most of his career. We moved to Maine, because we were looking for a place to raise our three children, and my husband was looking for a school where he could be a school administrator and be part of the community. We thought we found that, but after we moved here, his neurologist referred him to the surgeons to have the nerve stimulator implant. He had several appointments in Boston he had to go to before the implant surgery, and they wanted to try other surgical solutions before the implant. The district where he found a job had a lot of personnel problems. Other administrators were not certified and some were still going to college to become an administrator, including his direct supervisor. He was unaware of this when he accepted the job. In all of the states he had previously worked in, it was mandatory to be certified for the education job you were applying for. In Maine, that was not the case, and he had no idea.

To make a very long story short, his supervisor used my husband’s medical needs as a way to draw attention away from his supervisor’s inability to be successful at his job. My husband was just finishing his doctoral degree, had about 15 years of teaching experience, and was fully certified to be an administrator, but his supervisor was just beginning his master’s degree, had a few years of teaching experience, and was overwhelmed by his job. My husband paid the price. He was given a choice by his employer, continue to go to Boston and leave the job, or stay in the job, and give up seeking the medical treatment he was receiving in Boston. He never had a problem finding a job, so he left that job and continued with the treatment in Boston. As I have already written, having the nerve stimulator implant ended up being a complete disaster and left him disabled.

Once he was disabled, he did not qualify for social security, because teachers do not pay into social security in the states he worked in, and he did not qualify for Maine State retirement disability, because to be eligible, you must become disabled while you are working in the job. He left his job to have the surgeries. He did not qualify for any kind of disability. We tried everything we could. He was not eligible for anything. So, since 2007, he has received no kind of income or qualifies for any kind of support.

Here is the last wrinkle in our situation. I worked for the United States Postal Service for 17 years, before I became disabled from a workplace injury. I qualified for workers’ compensation at first. It took so long to get approved for the first surgery I needed, the success rate of the surgery was minimal. I had the first injury operated on twice, and the rotator cuff in my left shoulder just kept tearing after each surgery. By that time, the damage to my neck was not repairable. I was left disabled. When the surgeons could no longer help me with my injuries, I was forced to switch over to social security disability, which I qualified for, but it took a year for the switch to take place, even though I was already approved. So, for one year, we had no income or no support. Yes, I did receive the year's worth of pay in a lump sum, but the damage is done with your creditors and the mortgage holder. It was impossible to come back from that year of living off of the small amount you get from TANF and food pantries.

Luckily, it took a while to finally lose the house, mostly because foreclosures were temporarily stopped during COVID-19. Our mortgage was another part of the problem. When my husband took the job in Maine, the housing bubble in 2006 happened. We lived in a condominium where units usually sold very quickly, due to their location, and sometimes above the asking price. We tried to sell for a year with no luck. My husband stayed up in Maine during the week and would drive home on the weekends for that year. That ate up most of our savings. After a year, a few of his family members helped us put down enough to get a mortgage on a house in Maine allowing us to rent our condo out. Since we already had a mortgage on the condo, the mortgage rate for our house in Maine was very high, with the understanding that we would refinance as soon as we could sell the condo. We did rent out the condo by using a realtor, but in a matter of months, the tenant violated several contractual issues, damaged the condo, and stopped paying the rent. This happened right when my husband was being pushed to leave if he wanted to have the surgeries he was supposed to have. We lost the condo, we were never able to reduce the interest rate for the house mortgage, and eventually couldn’t pay the house mortgage either. We tried to ask for refinancing or find any program we could qualify for to keep the house, but the mortgage holder would not work with us. We communicated with the mortgage holder a lot. No solution was ever proposed, not even once. By the time we lost the house, the principal had more than doubled due to interest and fees. The mortgage holder even refused to respond to our lawyer, which continued through the eviction.

We raised our kids with very little. We never took a vacation after 2006, we barely traveled anywhere, even to see family, because we couldn’t afford it. In all this time, no one really understood what we were going through. We didn’t complain, because we were afraid to push people away. The fact that my husband was not well pushed enough people away. After a while, people didn’t want to hear that he wasn’t better or that he wasn’t able to work. It got to a point where our lives were just us and our three kids, with the occasional visit from someone once or twice a year. My husband has spent the past 7 years in bed, and the past 10 years before that, primarily in bed, but able to do very few things. We were eventually alone, with very little help, support, or understanding. Now, we are without a home. We can’t find anything to rent for five people in our price range. We want to move closer to where we grew up, but we don’t have the means to get there. Our things are in storage, which is costing more money.

If my husband had written this, and added things about me from his perspective, he probably would tell you the following. My wife has lived stressed out for so long that she lives in a state of feeling depressed and overwhelmed. He wouldn’t be wrong. It seems that no matter what I do, how hard I try, no matter who I contact, and whose advice I follow, we can’t seem to get anywhere. We didn’t cause any of the problems that have impacted our lives financially. We both would love to be able to work because we were both raised with a strong work ethic. We both find it very stressful to be not working. There were times when both of us worked 60 hours a week and more, and we never used daycare. I feel like I am trapped in a feeding frenzy and everyone just keeps taking from us and injuring us more and more, and there is almost nothing left for us to lose.

We want to use the funds to find a place to live. We are hoping that, with enough help to put money down on a home, we could get a mortgage for a small home. If we can't get enough to do that, then we will use the money to rent something we can afford. We have good credit, just not enough income for a mortgage with no down payment. COVID extended the process, so the foreclosure has already been removed from our credit. The 7-year time period has just passed. The only problem with our credit is the debt-to-income ratio. At this point, we have one week left for our short-term rental, and after that, we do not have enough to rent anymore. We have no place to go. Please contact me with any questions I can answer.