Help Heather in Injury Recovery While Unemployed

Hi! My name is Heather, although I also write books under the name Kasey Mackenzie and play video games as Kaitastrophe. I'm starting this GoFundMe mostly for the benefit of my husband, Shawn, who has been taking excellent care of me in the weeks since I "took a swan dive" (according to one of my favorite friends) down our stairs and severely shattered my ankle. In the normal scheme of things, this wouldn't be such a financially devastating event for us. But the unfortunate fact is that I've been unemployed from the new job I had taken in the middle of the pandemic to get a great career opportunity with a title bump and a huge pay increase--only to be laid off due to Covid three months later.

That was back in January. I never expected to be unemployed this long, because that's just not something I've experienced before and I am a pretty talented SEO and Content Marketing Manager/Copywriter. A position that is in pretty high demand right now. Stupid Covid slowing things down, I guess. And then I was just starting to get great traction in my job search when I took that graceful swan dive. Meaning I had to withdraw from a couple positions that were seriously interested in me and kind of halt the whole process for a bit. And obviously I'm not really able to write more books right now to try and earn a little extra money that way. Hopefully soon...but not quite there yet.

Through it all, my husband has been my rock. He nursed me through the first three days of constant pain when all I could do was cry and scream (yes, it was THAT bad - a 10-20 on a scale of 1-10). He cried himself sometimes, until I told him to "Suck it up, Buttercup! This is my week to cry. You get next week!" He told me he would have taken all the pain for me if he could, but I told him that as a woman I can obviously take the pain way better than him and he would have been crying on the floor in minutes. Yeah, I can still trash talk with the best of them. ;)

In addition to helping cater to my every need and listening to me babble when the pain, fear of pain, and PTSD overwhelm me, Shawn is also continuing to work full-time from home. He hasn't hesitated to spend money we really can't afford to make my life easier and bring me comfort. And he doesn't let me see it, but I know he's stressed out about finances. So I wanted to try to make things at least a little easier for him in the only way I can. Seeing as how I'm the first to contribute to fundraisers and help people out, I'm trying not to feel guilty about asking for donations now myself.

For now, I am still pretty confined to the family room in our basement (only one step up versus an entire flight to the rest of the house!) for another few weeks, at which point I get the cast off and a boot on. Then I should have about 5-6 weeks of physical therapy. I'm hoping at that point I will be able to return to my very part-time job teaching Zumba. And maybe sometime between now and then I can re-start my job search in earnest.

So anyway...long sob story over. Any funds raised in this fundraiser will go toward helping cover our medical expenses specifically related to this injury, regular living expenses/bills, and groceries/food while I'm recuperating. Please only donate if/what you can afford, and also consider sharing this with others who you think may want to help. Any assistance or even just positive thoughts and healing vibes are very much appreciated.

Thank you so much! --Heather/Kasey/Kait