Help Mary Ellen Fight Cancer
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I never thought I would be here, but I am very reluctantly asking for some financial assistance today. My story involves a divorce, two recessions, taking care of and elderly parent with dementia, a worldwide pandemic -- and cancer. So this is how I got here.
When I graduated from college in 2009, I did so with a marriage that had fallen apart, into a deep recession, and having extremely unwisely taken out a slew of student loans. (When I returned to college in 2006, the student loans weren't necessary, but the mortgage crisis would devastate my ex-husband's business. The plan had been to graduate, get a good job, sell my apartment.) When I was unable to find a job in the 2009 economy, I started a dog-walking business ("A Dog Walk in the Park") and picked up my old self-employment as a legal transcriptionist, which I could do remotely. Together this worked, and I was able to get a loan modification on my apartment and cobble together a good living while going through a contentious divorce, which was finally finalized in 2016, the same year I came out of bankruptcy. I had my small apartment, with a large mortgage, and no alimony.
The plan was to resume the career search when the economy improved, but I had to start caring for my then-85 year old mother in 2012, who like me had also gotten divorced in her 50s after a long marriage. I went down to Maryland to sell her home and brought her to live with me in my apartment in New York. I was only able to do that through my self-employment, but as caring for her became more and more time-consuming, the option of finding a more substantive job with benefits and increasing pay (transcription pay has stayed largely the same for well over 20 years, and there are no benefits) became more and more unrealistic, and the time I had to spend caring for her became greater and greater as her dementia progressed. By 2016 she could not be left alone for even a short time, needed assistance with all activities of daily living, and by 2018 was very confused as to who I was.
Mom passed away at the end of 2019 at the age of 92. So 2020 loomed with a determination to focus in again on raising my income, by either relaunching Dog Walk in the Park while taking on more transcription work, or jumping back into the career search. There was not much left of her estate.
But we all know what happened. By March, the opportunities for dog walking were gone, and the transcription work dropped dramatically. And like everyone effectively in a gig economy, I fell through the cracks of assistance. I wasn't UNemployed. My income was just greatly reduced, and even further reduced from where I had planned to raise it to. But I wasn't able to collect any kind of unemployment and had to draw from limited savings instead. Selling the apartment wasn't really an option either in the middle of a pandemic, and those student loans made a deep cut into what equity there would be. I simply needed to build a good income, and was ready to do so.
But by May, something much more dramatic was lurking when I started having health issues. In July I had a hysterectomy, and it was at that point they discovered that I had a uterine leiomyosarcoma. A couple of weeks later, a CT scan showed that it had already metastasized to my lungs.
In September, both the transcription work and the dogwalking had greatly recovered. But dogwalking was out because I was too compromised healthwise to be going into other people's houses. I starting doing as much transcription work as I could, but September is also when I started my chemotherapy. In September and October, I was hospitalized a total of three times. By the end of October, it was discovered that my first course of chemotherapy wasn't working. So in November, I started another.
Three months of that chemo didn't do the trick either. The lesions in my lungs doubled. So I'm now on the third course of chemo, and I'm on track to be in a clinical trial for a drug to be used in conjunction with the new chemo. In the meantime, I'm back in the hospital today dealing with the effects of the new chemo on my body, and my ability to sustain working through all this has greatly diminished. I had hoped to hold off on receiving Social Security until age 70, but that was no longer a good bet, so I started getting it at age 66, in January. I receive $1,100 a month, and without working, that is the total of my income.
Meanwhile, I'm very grateful that I got on Medicare before all this happened, but even with a supplement, it still doesn't cover everything. I've still had several thousands of dollars in medical bills.
So that's where I'm at right now, weathering this seemingly perfect storm of financial hits, and why in the last year I've had to burn through limited savings. I've kept up working as best a I can, but I need to stop, so I can really use some help. Please spread as widely as possible. Thank you so much.
When I graduated from college in 2009, I did so with a marriage that had fallen apart, into a deep recession, and having extremely unwisely taken out a slew of student loans. (When I returned to college in 2006, the student loans weren't necessary, but the mortgage crisis would devastate my ex-husband's business. The plan had been to graduate, get a good job, sell my apartment.) When I was unable to find a job in the 2009 economy, I started a dog-walking business ("A Dog Walk in the Park") and picked up my old self-employment as a legal transcriptionist, which I could do remotely. Together this worked, and I was able to get a loan modification on my apartment and cobble together a good living while going through a contentious divorce, which was finally finalized in 2016, the same year I came out of bankruptcy. I had my small apartment, with a large mortgage, and no alimony.
The plan was to resume the career search when the economy improved, but I had to start caring for my then-85 year old mother in 2012, who like me had also gotten divorced in her 50s after a long marriage. I went down to Maryland to sell her home and brought her to live with me in my apartment in New York. I was only able to do that through my self-employment, but as caring for her became more and more time-consuming, the option of finding a more substantive job with benefits and increasing pay (transcription pay has stayed largely the same for well over 20 years, and there are no benefits) became more and more unrealistic, and the time I had to spend caring for her became greater and greater as her dementia progressed. By 2016 she could not be left alone for even a short time, needed assistance with all activities of daily living, and by 2018 was very confused as to who I was.
Mom passed away at the end of 2019 at the age of 92. So 2020 loomed with a determination to focus in again on raising my income, by either relaunching Dog Walk in the Park while taking on more transcription work, or jumping back into the career search. There was not much left of her estate.
But we all know what happened. By March, the opportunities for dog walking were gone, and the transcription work dropped dramatically. And like everyone effectively in a gig economy, I fell through the cracks of assistance. I wasn't UNemployed. My income was just greatly reduced, and even further reduced from where I had planned to raise it to. But I wasn't able to collect any kind of unemployment and had to draw from limited savings instead. Selling the apartment wasn't really an option either in the middle of a pandemic, and those student loans made a deep cut into what equity there would be. I simply needed to build a good income, and was ready to do so.
But by May, something much more dramatic was lurking when I started having health issues. In July I had a hysterectomy, and it was at that point they discovered that I had a uterine leiomyosarcoma. A couple of weeks later, a CT scan showed that it had already metastasized to my lungs.
In September, both the transcription work and the dogwalking had greatly recovered. But dogwalking was out because I was too compromised healthwise to be going into other people's houses. I starting doing as much transcription work as I could, but September is also when I started my chemotherapy. In September and October, I was hospitalized a total of three times. By the end of October, it was discovered that my first course of chemotherapy wasn't working. So in November, I started another.
Three months of that chemo didn't do the trick either. The lesions in my lungs doubled. So I'm now on the third course of chemo, and I'm on track to be in a clinical trial for a drug to be used in conjunction with the new chemo. In the meantime, I'm back in the hospital today dealing with the effects of the new chemo on my body, and my ability to sustain working through all this has greatly diminished. I had hoped to hold off on receiving Social Security until age 70, but that was no longer a good bet, so I started getting it at age 66, in January. I receive $1,100 a month, and without working, that is the total of my income.
Meanwhile, I'm very grateful that I got on Medicare before all this happened, but even with a supplement, it still doesn't cover everything. I've still had several thousands of dollars in medical bills.
So that's where I'm at right now, weathering this seemingly perfect storm of financial hits, and why in the last year I've had to burn through limited savings. I've kept up working as best a I can, but I need to stop, so I can really use some help. Please spread as widely as possible. Thank you so much.
Organizer
Mary Ellen Feinberg
Organizer
New York, NY