Oh, we CAN'T keep doing this!!!
Donation protected
PART II - NOT AGAIN!! AAAAAAHHHHGH!!!!
Hello friends, I most certainly did NOT expect to be back here. I absolutely HATE, HATE, HATE being here, asking for donations for debt & bills you had no hand in creating, but there you were, opening your hearts and wallets, to show you care. Some may have been there yourselves, & can understand somewhat of what we're going through. But regardless, you were there to say you cared, & it was GREATLY APPRECIATED and used to take care of several debts, things were going very well........but then it seems like it all hit at once. In the course of a year, Mary had 3 surgeries, 2 on her wrists and elbow, and 1 on her foot, along with several other procedures. Then I come along, the 5-year battery on my DBS implant needed to be changed, and that certainly was not cheap. (about $50,000 if your keeping score) but I DO have insurance(thank GOD) so our out-of-pocket totals for all those ended up around $5000. Now, I don't know how stupid this was, but pretty much right around the time all this was happening, I took out a HUGE loan on my 401k at work, as it was my only option I had left to get any more of our debt taken care of, but it takes a pretty good chunk out of my check. I figured we'd pretty much cover most of the bills we had left, as it should have, but I had to get about $2000 worth of work done on my vehicles transmission, new tires, and we haven't gotten much repaired on the other. And now, my SUV, is running like crap, backfiring and such, & the exhaust is COMPLETELY shot, so now I need to replace that as well! So that, our furnace went out, and then all the ensuing medical bills, & Mary having to quit her job at Menards because of the physical strain it was putting on her, we're living on MY income alone, which we really hadn't planned on her not working AT ALL, & now she's STILL in the process of filing for Social Security Disability. She is STILL having medical issues, now with her lower spine, she's got a pinched nerve, and a bulging disc in her back and her neck, giving her fits. Then, of course, there are MY issues that I pretty much have under control. I have been off work now for about 3 months now, because my legs have been giving me some trouble with walking, and my balance has been way off, but I have recently completed a physical therapy program designed specifically for Parkinsons Disease patients, and I am doing much better now. But because of my past issues, & now this, I have completely run out of vacation and personal time at work, and I have been on short-term disability through my work, which is a whopping 50% of my normal salary, which is impossible to live on alone. And now we are backed into a corner, overdrawn on our bank account, late on nearly all of our bills, we're dangerously close to getting our power, gas, AND water shut off. Our phones HAVE recently been shut off, which we absolutely NEED for scheduling our doctor appointments, getting prescriptions, etc. It's our only lifeline we have for verbal communication. We pay and do most of our bills & banking online, and we're fortunate enough to have great neighbors who are allowing us to piggyback on their wi-fi until we get back on our feet again and can afford internet access. and to top it all off we missed paying our insurance premiums on our house and our vehicles, so we got dropped, and can't save up enough to put deposits down on new policies!! We've gotten some help from our families and a few close friends, and we are SO grateful to them, but it's mainly just helped us to keep food on the table, and keep a few bills up to date. So, with really nowhere else to turn but to you, the rest of our friends. We're stuck, plain & simple. & I've said before that I've never claimed to be a financial genius, some of this could be my doing, I don't know. I DO know that we could REALLY use your help again, seriously.............thanks.
Doug & Mary Norris
ORIGINAL POST
Hello everyone, my name is Doug Norris. I come here today with my pride on a shelf. I absolutely HATE doing this, but we are out of options, except filing bankruptcy, & we absolutely DO NOT want to do that if at all possible, so this is the last card that we have to play. We have racked up SO much debt, We just can't seem to get out of this ever-deepening hole my wife, Mary & I are stuck in, no matter how much we cut back on things. But we're not some morons who just went bonkers with their credit cards.......there is a reason behind our debt........
The (not so) short story: In 2010, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.....3 days before my 40th birthday. In 2012, I underwent surgery to have probes inserted into my brain, to control my tremors. 4 years later, & I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. I have my good days & bad days. The main issue I have to contend these days is fatigue, and RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome). I still work full-time, & still, enjoy my job. My employer has been very understanding of my condition. I dread the day that I am unable to do my job effectively, & have to retire because of it.
In the past couple of years, I have had a pinched nerve in my back, and most recently, Radial Nerve Palsy. Basically, I compressed the radial nerve in my right arm, & I couldn't lift my wrist upward. All I could do was wait it out until the nerve "woke up". It took 3 months before I could return to work. Both instances also required physical therapy, which my insurance doesn't cover very well. Along with that, all my medications, periodic evaluations from my neurologists here and in IA City, travel, dental work I had to have done, you would think that those bills would be enough..........but there is another......
My wife, Mary, has had Fibromyalgia for 16 years, and in the last few years, it has seemed to be getting worse. The constant pain, migraines, and everything else related, just won't go away. She is taking more medications than I am, and they have caused her weight gain, high blood pressure, constant fatigue, and several other symptoms. On top of THAT, in the past 2 years, she has had Carpel Tunnel surgery, surgery on a nerve in her elbow, and she is just returning to work from having a bunion surgically removed. Holy crap, I didn't realize what was involved in that type of surgery! So, she has hardly worked at all, which hasn't helped matters, either.
So, during the course of all this, trying to keep up with and/or pay off some of these bills, I had started to pay for groceries, gas, utilities, etc with my credit cards. I was even making CC payments with other credit cards!! And before I knew it, I had maxed out 2 cards out of 5, and the other balances were getting up there as well. I knew I had to do something, because I couldn't afford even paying the minimum payments anymore. So I signed up with a debt relief company, which helped for a while. They negotiated & got 2 of my cards paid off, which helped some, but even then, with everything going on, & my wife not working, we were unable to continue with their program. We just couldn't swing making payments for all of our medical bills, and make the payments to the debt relief company, so I had to drop them. And more importantly, I was getting behind on my mortgage payments. So we had our mortgage lender take out extra every week, so we could get caught up, and we are almost there, but at the expense of not being able to pay other bills. Damn near had power, phone, water shut off a couple of times, but we've managed to scrape by......BARELY. We've been living check-to-check for what seems like forever, and the stress is just too much!! Now, I don't claim to be any sort of financial wizard by any means, and there may have been a way to avoid some or all of this, but I think the fact that bills just kept coming and coming, just overwhelmed us in a short period of time. So here we are.......We've sold almost everything of value that we can, including my wife's wedding ring set, which originally I was VERY adamant about not selling it, but we got to a point where it was the only option we had.
And that's kind of the whole point of this, is that we are SO stressed out over finances.....it's seriously not good PHYSICALLY for me OR my wife. And I don't want to spend the last years that I or my wife are able to physically function on our own, to be spent worrying about if the damn lights are going to be on tomorrow or not! It would be easy to say just get another job on the side, but neither of us is physically able, so that's just not an option, unfortunately.
We would appreciate ANY help we could get, to help pay off all these outstanding medical bills we have, finish getting caught back up on the mortgage, all the utilities we are behind on, and pay off the credit cards we still have balances on (we've been living without them for almost 2 years now), get some much-needed maintenance/repairs done on our 2 vehicles, and a few house repairs, so we can concentrate on our physical selves and just breathe a little easier.
We could use any donations as soon as possible, as the bill collectors, as some of you know, are pretty relentless in trying to get you to pay.
This would mean SO much to my wife and I, to be able to not wonder if we're going to have enough money to buy the groceries we need, or if the gas/electric/water/phones are going to be shut off, etc. And like I said before, I don't want to spend the last years that I or my wife are able to physically function on our own, to be spent worrying about paying our bills.......
We thank you a million times in advance for your donations, & if possible, we will personally thank each one of you who chooses to help us.
Thank you for your time......
Hello friends, I most certainly did NOT expect to be back here. I absolutely HATE, HATE, HATE being here, asking for donations for debt & bills you had no hand in creating, but there you were, opening your hearts and wallets, to show you care. Some may have been there yourselves, & can understand somewhat of what we're going through. But regardless, you were there to say you cared, & it was GREATLY APPRECIATED and used to take care of several debts, things were going very well........but then it seems like it all hit at once. In the course of a year, Mary had 3 surgeries, 2 on her wrists and elbow, and 1 on her foot, along with several other procedures. Then I come along, the 5-year battery on my DBS implant needed to be changed, and that certainly was not cheap. (about $50,000 if your keeping score) but I DO have insurance(thank GOD) so our out-of-pocket totals for all those ended up around $5000. Now, I don't know how stupid this was, but pretty much right around the time all this was happening, I took out a HUGE loan on my 401k at work, as it was my only option I had left to get any more of our debt taken care of, but it takes a pretty good chunk out of my check. I figured we'd pretty much cover most of the bills we had left, as it should have, but I had to get about $2000 worth of work done on my vehicles transmission, new tires, and we haven't gotten much repaired on the other. And now, my SUV, is running like crap, backfiring and such, & the exhaust is COMPLETELY shot, so now I need to replace that as well! So that, our furnace went out, and then all the ensuing medical bills, & Mary having to quit her job at Menards because of the physical strain it was putting on her, we're living on MY income alone, which we really hadn't planned on her not working AT ALL, & now she's STILL in the process of filing for Social Security Disability. She is STILL having medical issues, now with her lower spine, she's got a pinched nerve, and a bulging disc in her back and her neck, giving her fits. Then, of course, there are MY issues that I pretty much have under control. I have been off work now for about 3 months now, because my legs have been giving me some trouble with walking, and my balance has been way off, but I have recently completed a physical therapy program designed specifically for Parkinsons Disease patients, and I am doing much better now. But because of my past issues, & now this, I have completely run out of vacation and personal time at work, and I have been on short-term disability through my work, which is a whopping 50% of my normal salary, which is impossible to live on alone. And now we are backed into a corner, overdrawn on our bank account, late on nearly all of our bills, we're dangerously close to getting our power, gas, AND water shut off. Our phones HAVE recently been shut off, which we absolutely NEED for scheduling our doctor appointments, getting prescriptions, etc. It's our only lifeline we have for verbal communication. We pay and do most of our bills & banking online, and we're fortunate enough to have great neighbors who are allowing us to piggyback on their wi-fi until we get back on our feet again and can afford internet access. and to top it all off we missed paying our insurance premiums on our house and our vehicles, so we got dropped, and can't save up enough to put deposits down on new policies!! We've gotten some help from our families and a few close friends, and we are SO grateful to them, but it's mainly just helped us to keep food on the table, and keep a few bills up to date. So, with really nowhere else to turn but to you, the rest of our friends. We're stuck, plain & simple. & I've said before that I've never claimed to be a financial genius, some of this could be my doing, I don't know. I DO know that we could REALLY use your help again, seriously.............thanks.
Doug & Mary Norris
ORIGINAL POST
Hello everyone, my name is Doug Norris. I come here today with my pride on a shelf. I absolutely HATE doing this, but we are out of options, except filing bankruptcy, & we absolutely DO NOT want to do that if at all possible, so this is the last card that we have to play. We have racked up SO much debt, We just can't seem to get out of this ever-deepening hole my wife, Mary & I are stuck in, no matter how much we cut back on things. But we're not some morons who just went bonkers with their credit cards.......there is a reason behind our debt........
The (not so) short story: In 2010, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.....3 days before my 40th birthday. In 2012, I underwent surgery to have probes inserted into my brain, to control my tremors. 4 years later, & I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. I have my good days & bad days. The main issue I have to contend these days is fatigue, and RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome). I still work full-time, & still, enjoy my job. My employer has been very understanding of my condition. I dread the day that I am unable to do my job effectively, & have to retire because of it.
In the past couple of years, I have had a pinched nerve in my back, and most recently, Radial Nerve Palsy. Basically, I compressed the radial nerve in my right arm, & I couldn't lift my wrist upward. All I could do was wait it out until the nerve "woke up". It took 3 months before I could return to work. Both instances also required physical therapy, which my insurance doesn't cover very well. Along with that, all my medications, periodic evaluations from my neurologists here and in IA City, travel, dental work I had to have done, you would think that those bills would be enough..........but there is another......
My wife, Mary, has had Fibromyalgia for 16 years, and in the last few years, it has seemed to be getting worse. The constant pain, migraines, and everything else related, just won't go away. She is taking more medications than I am, and they have caused her weight gain, high blood pressure, constant fatigue, and several other symptoms. On top of THAT, in the past 2 years, she has had Carpel Tunnel surgery, surgery on a nerve in her elbow, and she is just returning to work from having a bunion surgically removed. Holy crap, I didn't realize what was involved in that type of surgery! So, she has hardly worked at all, which hasn't helped matters, either.
So, during the course of all this, trying to keep up with and/or pay off some of these bills, I had started to pay for groceries, gas, utilities, etc with my credit cards. I was even making CC payments with other credit cards!! And before I knew it, I had maxed out 2 cards out of 5, and the other balances were getting up there as well. I knew I had to do something, because I couldn't afford even paying the minimum payments anymore. So I signed up with a debt relief company, which helped for a while. They negotiated & got 2 of my cards paid off, which helped some, but even then, with everything going on, & my wife not working, we were unable to continue with their program. We just couldn't swing making payments for all of our medical bills, and make the payments to the debt relief company, so I had to drop them. And more importantly, I was getting behind on my mortgage payments. So we had our mortgage lender take out extra every week, so we could get caught up, and we are almost there, but at the expense of not being able to pay other bills. Damn near had power, phone, water shut off a couple of times, but we've managed to scrape by......BARELY. We've been living check-to-check for what seems like forever, and the stress is just too much!! Now, I don't claim to be any sort of financial wizard by any means, and there may have been a way to avoid some or all of this, but I think the fact that bills just kept coming and coming, just overwhelmed us in a short period of time. So here we are.......We've sold almost everything of value that we can, including my wife's wedding ring set, which originally I was VERY adamant about not selling it, but we got to a point where it was the only option we had.
And that's kind of the whole point of this, is that we are SO stressed out over finances.....it's seriously not good PHYSICALLY for me OR my wife. And I don't want to spend the last years that I or my wife are able to physically function on our own, to be spent worrying about if the damn lights are going to be on tomorrow or not! It would be easy to say just get another job on the side, but neither of us is physically able, so that's just not an option, unfortunately.We would appreciate ANY help we could get, to help pay off all these outstanding medical bills we have, finish getting caught back up on the mortgage, all the utilities we are behind on, and pay off the credit cards we still have balances on (we've been living without them for almost 2 years now), get some much-needed maintenance/repairs done on our 2 vehicles, and a few house repairs, so we can concentrate on our physical selves and just breathe a little easier.
We could use any donations as soon as possible, as the bill collectors, as some of you know, are pretty relentless in trying to get you to pay.
This would mean SO much to my wife and I, to be able to not wonder if we're going to have enough money to buy the groceries we need, or if the gas/electric/water/phones are going to be shut off, etc. And like I said before, I don't want to spend the last years that I or my wife are able to physically function on our own, to be spent worrying about paying our bills.......
We thank you a million times in advance for your donations, & if possible, we will personally thank each one of you who chooses to help us.
Thank you for your time......
Organizer
Doug Norris
Organizer
Davenport, IA