MormonMama
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Posts posted by MormonMama
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Yeah, sorry about that, lol. I hadn't really paid attention to how I was wording that.
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Actually, I was referring to DH's medical bills. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I won't be getting a bill for the delivery because I have different insurance than he does and mine covers everything.
DH has VA benefits and we've never had to use them before, so we don't know how their billing system works. We do know that coverage depends on what level you are and we know what level he is, but the little bit of info we've found on his level of coverage has been very confusing and we just can't tell what our out-of-pocket costs, if any, will be.
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The October child sounds like a child I had years ago. The parents later found out he was autistic. If he NEVER makes eye contact, that's a pretty good indication.
This was my first thought as well, although it's no guarantee of course. Has anyone talked to the parents about what they do at home to curb his behavior?
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Thanks again for all the prayers everyone! I'm feeling better and DH is doing VERY well. He has another appointment on February 6th and we should hopefully find out that day if he will be able to go back to work or if he will be off longer.
I'm still pregnant and might be getting induced tomorrow. My amniotic fluid levels were measuring low yesterday so they are having me go back in tomorrow to be remeasured and if they're still low they'll induce. If everything looks good, they'll send me home. Honestly, I'm so done I think I'd rather be induced.
We still have not heard one word from the hospital about a bill, so we're just not going to worry about it until we do. Maybe they're waiting until all treatment is done, or maybe even more is covered than we thought. I know we can make payment arrangements, as we've had to do that in the past with other hospitals (in fact, I just paid off an emergency room bill from last June), but it's just one more bill we really don't want to have to deal with right now. We'll just have to wait and see what comes of it all.
Thanks again everyone! I really feel your prayers have helped. DH is healing MUCH faster than we'd expected!
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I am eating a really strict diet that is mostly free of simple carbs and sugar. Watching my portions and all that. My friend down the street eats more calories than I do, and most of them are candy and other junk. We work out together so I know we're on the same regimen. Explain to me why she loses weight like crazy, and I don't lose much at all?
I used to be able to eat like that. I ate junk food, Big Macs, drank lots of soda, etc. every day and was underweight most of my life. I mean bones-sticking-out underweight. In school kids used to ask my sister and me if we were anorexic. One well-meaning neighbor asked my sister all kinds of personal (and for a 12-year-old, frightening) questions thinking she had an eating disorder.
In my early 30's I suddenly started piling on weight. I gained 40 lbs in two years. People were asking my husband if I was pregnant. I had my thyroid and other things tested but everything was normal. Turns out I'd just finally received the "curse" of the women in my family: super skinny through childhood and our 20's, then we start piling it on in our 30's (and by our 50's we usually have diabetes). I finally topped out at 170 lbs when I was around 35 (at 5'7") and went on the South Beach Diet, which helped me lose 20 lbs of that in 4 months. But I've never gotten down under 150 again.
Now I'm 40 and pregnant and funnily enough, just like when I was in my 20's, I have struggled and struggled to gain weight with this pregnancy. For some reason my body just doesn't like to gain weight in pregnancy and no matter what I eat I not only don't gain much, I LOSE. It's not a matter of morning sickness. I had none with this baby (a few brief episodes of queasiness, that was it). I expect that once this baby comes I'll find I'm actually a few pounds lighter than I was when I got pregnant!
Metabolism, it's a weird thing and it can change on you for no apparent reason.
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You are in my prayers!
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Thanks everyone for the prayers and well-wishes. I've been super, super sick all week (in fact, I came down horrible sick the same day DH came home from the hospital; what timing), so everything has just been on hold all week. I'm finally starting to feel better today and my fever seems to be gone for good.
I still have not heard back from any of the programs I applied for help from, but I've been too sick to follow up as well and DH just isn't good for any of that. We told our second counselor at church (he lives down the street from us) but have heard from absolutely no one else, not the Bishop, not the RS President, no one.
We also have not heard from the hospital on the bill yet, so we still don't know what this will cost. He has VA benefits and we did find out that the costs shouldn't be as high as we'd feared, but we'll still have to make payments for any amount we owe. With me off work on maternity leave (still no baby yet!) at 60% of my pay and DH not getting paid at all, plus both of us missing a paycheck this month because of the unpaid Christmas break, they're just going to have to accept payments (but I'm sure they will; they're used to people poor people there).
DH is feeling a lot better. He ended up having surgery to put the broken chunk of bone back in place. It took 2 screws and he has 17 staples in his shoulder, but the doctor who performed the surgery thinks DH might be able to go back to work driving a school bus in as little as 4 weeks after the surgery (so 3 weeks from now), IF his physical therapy goes well. It might be closer to 6 weeks, but that's WAY better than the 12-24 weeks we were originally being told.
DH also found out that he has 4 paid days off from his second job. Since he only works Saturday nights there, that's 4 weeks basically that he'll get paid for (two paychecks). He won't be able to go back to work there for over 6 weeks (too much heavy lifting), but at least that's just the part-time, lower-paying job so it's not as big of a deal if he has more time off from that one.
So financially it doesn't look like this will be as big of a disaster as we'd feared (most likely one of the many blessings of paying our tithing!). We do have some money saved up, though not a lot, but as long as the medical bills don't turn out to be really astronomical we should be okay. February is going to be our roughest month. The tax refund we should get in March will help get us through until we start bringing in regular checks around the end of March/beginning of April again.
In pregnancy news, I'm now over 38 weeks and STILL pregnant, which is just a huge shock to everyone. My doctor is now talking about possibly inducing if the baby doesn't come in the next few days, because I've had a previous C-section and she's worried about the stress on the scar tissue if I get much bigger. I guess that wouldn't be a bad thing, since we could schedule it for a time when all 3 of my daughters can be there (we really want them in the delivery room with us). Since the older two have jobs and will also be returning to college soon, things are really starting to get down to the wire!
Thanks again for all the prayers and support! I appreciate it so much!
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Thank you guys.
DH has already been disqualified for AHCCCS (Arizona's version of medicaid), but I'm going to try reapplying for him now that he has NO income. Maybe they will at least cover whatever is leftover after the other insurance takes care of their part. But it's not even the medical bills that are worrying us, as we know the hospital will make a payment plan. It's things like groceries, rent, diapers and wipes for the new baby we have coming soon, etc. Our income is going to drop to around $400-$600 a month for the next couple of months, and even when I go back to work "full-time" I only get 30 hours a week, so my income will still be only about $1000 a month take-home.
We're going to try and apply for food stamps and cash assistance and we'll be calling our bishop. If we can even just get a food order from the storehouse that will help a lot.
I'm going to call all our bills and see if we can get some type of hardship deferral. We are expecting a small tax refund this spring, so that will help, but I'm sure it will be at least March before we get it.
On the plus side, I still sat down this morning (it's payday, thank goodness) and wrote out our tithing checks and I felt such a feeling of peace and comfort while doing so. I know Heavenly Father will take care of us and this will all work out somehow.
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DH fell yesterday and both broke and dislocated his left shoulder. He had to have surgery last night to put the bone back in the socket and he will face at least one more surgery to deal with the broken part.
I start my maternity leave on Monday. We are at the tail end of two weeks off work (unpaid) for the winter break. DH will not be able to work ANY of his 3 jobs for at least 12 weeks and the Dr said it could be as long as 24 weeks. He has short-term disability at his bus-driving job, but the other two are part-time (one is just doing yard work for a lady every other Saturday) so he will just lose out on that income. With me being so close to my due date (January 24th), I can't even go out and get another job to take up the slack.
And, of course, this had to happen two days into the new year, when our deductibles are back to $0, so now we'll owe AT LEAST $2500 on this hospital bill, plus another 20%.
With our combined lost income, I estimate that we'll lose about $1400 a month. I really don't know how we're going to survive. We're living with my aunt but she's retired and can't afford to pay our bills. She needs us to be paying her rent. Thank goodness we got $400 of minimum payments on debts taken care of before the new year started, but we're still going to have the costs of a new baby to deal with, not to mention these new medical bills, groceries, etc. The two credit cards we have left might work with us, but one has a minimum payment of only $15 a month, so it really won't help any to put that on hold. I've already requested a financial hardship deferral on my student loans (again!), which I really hate doing but I don't see how we can make the payments right now thanks to this. We'd just made arrangements to start paying on DH's car and now we'll probably have to put that on hold again. And we're just praying that our car with over 200,000 miles doesn't break down because now there will be NO money to do anything about it and we can't get to work without a car (public transit doesn't run early enough and we don't live near anyone we could carpool with)!
What a disaster. Thank goodness we have our BEF in place and a small stork fund, but they're really not going to cover much compared to how much this is going to cost us (in fact, our lost income for January alone will wipe all of that out). All because DH stepped wrong off a curb. Financial disaster can happen that easily and that fast.
Prayers, please, for a quick and painless-as-possible recover for him and that we can both go back to work as quickly as possible. I'm going to call our bishop today as well as have our names put on the prayer roll at the temple (for the house as well), but we need all the prayers we can get!
ETA: Oh, this just gets better and better. I just looked at our benefits paperwork and DH does NOT have short-term disability! I don't know how we even missed that (I remember there was a LOT of confusion with all the various paperwork because as the main benefit holder I had to put him on my benefits for some things but his own benefits for other things). That means NO income for him at all for at least 12 weeks! I just want the earth to open up and swallow me right now.
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I hate to say it, but I really think our realtor has a lot to do with it. Unfortunately we already signed a renewal contract with him before Christmas, so now we're in a contract with him until April. I don't believe it's all his fault. He has a terminally ill child who was in the hospital for several weeks at the end of last year and he has another severely disabled child, so I know things have been bad for him lately.
Our home is empty. It does need some repairs, but we've already done all we can afford (and our financial situation just got a LOT worse, which I'll be posting about in another prayer request). We've already painted. It needs all new tile (really, it needs all new subflooring too), the yard is just dirt, weeds and rocks, it needs all new weatherstripping and has termites. Other, smaller, homes in the same neighborhood (ours is one of the biggest) have sold for $35,000 and up, but the empty lot across the street from us (the house burned down) has been sitting at $25,000 for several months now with no sale.
In short, we cannot afford to do ANYTHING to improve this property right now or anytime in the near future, so we're stuck with what we have. DH will be out of commission for weeks now and I'm about to have a baby any day, so even if we could get free supplies it just won't be an option for awhile.
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Forgiveness gives us peace??? So this family is no longer grieving? That doesn't make sense. Seriously none of it makes sense to me.
Everyone else has already said what I would have said, so I'll just address this one part.
If this family's child had died in an accident where no one was at fault, would the family not grieve just because there is no one to blame? Grief does not equal blame. Peace does not equal a lack of grief.
I am reminded of a family in our old ward who lost their 15-year-old son to a tragic accident (he was a friend of my older two daughters as well). It was clear to me at the funeral that the family was grieving his loss, but I could also tell that they were at peace. They knew that their son was in the Lord's hands and they knew they would see him again. They were still sad to be parted from their son and brother, but at peace because they knew it was only temporary.
In a similar, yet not nearly as dramatic, vein: when I moved to another state my mother bawled her eyes out. She was sad to see me go, yet at peace knowing that it was the best decision at the time for me. She was "grieving", in a way, yet still at peace, even happy for me.
So I have no problem with someone being able to forgive a person who caused them horrible pain and being at peace even while still grieving over that pain. Being at peace does not mean a lack of grief or pain.
Now putting forgiveness into actual practice? Yes, I admit that I don't always succeed well at that either.
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No, honestly I hadn't thought of that, but we'll do so now. Thanks!
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Since it seemed to work so well for Jenamarie, I thought I'd try asking for prayers about our house as well. :)
Our home has been on the market for almost 6 months now. We have had one and only one inquiry about it. It was from a development group that offered HALF of what we owe on it (we owe $40,000) and their offer expired in only a week and we weren't able to get the paperwork in on time, so we missed out. Not that we think the note holders would have agreed anyway (our payments go to a title company, which takes out their fees and then deposits the rest of the money into a trust, so the holders of the trust have to approve any sale).
To top it off, there is a lien on the property due to an Emergency Home Repair Grant of $18,000 that the city gave us almost two years ago. They paid for several expensive repairs that we could not afford, such as a new septic system (ours had completely failed and raw sewage was backing up into our house), a new bathroom floor to replace the one that had caved in and a new heat/air conditioning unit (our A/C had never worked and the heater had died the previous winter). The deal was that the lien would be on the house for 10 years. If we sold the house during that time we were supposed to pay back the lien. It was to prevent us from making a profit on the city's dime. So if the house sells for less than we owe on it, the city either has to agree to drop the lien entirely or the lien gets transferred to the new owners.
We just want this house to sell. We don't want any profit off it at all (we've been living with my aunt since June), we just want it off our backs. The housing market here is still depressed, but it's not THAT bad and we don't understand why no one even seems to be interested. It's a good-sized house with a lot of new features, in a good, newer area of town with excellent schools. We really didn't expect it would be this hard to sell!
Prayers would be GREATLY appreciated!
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Adoption can also be frustratingly expensive. DH and I accepted long ago that adoption would likely never be a possibility for us due to the expense.
I second those who have spoken of serving in Primary. Although I have older children from before my marriage, as the years passed and the children DH and I had expected to have together did not come, I got very discouraged. It seemed as if everyone else in the Church my age was running around after their little ones, while my kids were in high school! Serving in the Primary (DH and I co-taught for several years) really helped patch some of the holes in our hearts, though I do have to say that such a calling didn't entirely erase the pain. I don't think anything can.
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.... I'm really worried because I am not young~ I'm going to turn 24 this up coming January~
To me, you are VERY young, lol! It's all about perspective. I'm 40 with two grown children (not to mention a teenager and a surprise baby on the way), over 20 years of college under my belt, $42,000 in student loans...and no degree. Believe me, you are ahead of me there!
There's nothing wrong with reassessing your life and goals every so often. I think we all need to do it. But please don't compare yourself with others and use them as your measuring stick. That is one reason I slogged through school for so many years, constantly changed my degree field and racked up so much student loan debt. I finally realized just in the past year that there is no career or job I really want to do that requires a degree, and that I was just going to school because I felt I should. I will probably never get a degree at this point and I'm okay with that, because I honestly think it would be wasted.
At 40, that is one part of my life and goals I needed to reassess. I wish I'd come to that realization years ago, but I didn't and so life goes on.
Life is not a race and success does not mean finishing goals as fast or faster than others. Comparing yourself to others is one of the best ways to feel like a failure. Set your own goals, make sure they are realistic, and don't be afraid to change or even cancel them entirely every so often.
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I think that sometimes we also look at promised blessings as being immediate or throughout our lives. You were promised health, but did your blessing specify that it would be for every day of your life or from that day on? It could very well be referring to some time in the future.
In my blessing I was promised that I would find an eternal companion who would take me to the temple. It took 9 years for that blessing to come true (and I was already in my 20's when I received the blessing, so that 9 years felt like an eternity!). Sometimes we need to remember that blessings come in the Lord's time and way.
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Congratulations!! I hope it all goes smoothely for you!
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Try counseling outside of your college. I'm not sure why they'd have to notify the police?
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It is not your place to go to the Bishop unless you are aware of something involving the bride and/or groom that would make them unworthy to enter the temple. And even then, I'm not sure it's your place to say anything.
You say you know both sides, but you really only know what both sides have told you. It seems to me that there is a lot more going on that what appears to be on the surface. Ultimately, it is the couple's decision as to when and where to have the wedding. If the bride is okay with not having her parents there (and not having mom at the shower), it seems to me that there are far deeper, longer-rooted issues here than you are aware of.
All you can do is be a supportive shoulder to cry on for your friend, nothing more.
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I don't see any identifying info either. :)
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I used to do that as well. You are in my prayers. Are you receiving any type of professional help?
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Happy happy birthday to you!!!
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Any word yet? You have my prayers.
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Thank you again everyone. I so appreciate the support and suggestions.
We haven't been attending church the past few weeks, mostly because DH is working OT at his job due to the holidays and is just too exhausted to get up and I've been having so much physical discomfort with my pregnancy that I can't handle sitting in those pews and chairs for 3 hours (I have back and hip problems and this pregnancy has just made them so much worse). However, DH and I have had a discussion and are determined to make more of an effort after the baby comes and the new year begins (which should be around the same time).
Even if all we do is attend our meetings, we know we still need the Spirit that church brings and we want our daughter to continue to have that socialization. If people were downright mean to us that would be different, but no one is mean, they just don't seem to want to put in much effort in the Church itself.
So maybe we DO need to be the ones to set the example, as others have suggested. Maybe my daughter's enthusiasm for the Gospel will rub off on other youth and even her leaders. Maybe DH's dedication to attending meetings even when he is so tired that he is falling asleep will touch someone's heart and instill in them a desire to put in more effort. And who doesn't love to see new babies, right?
So for now we're going to take care of US, but we have a plan as a family to try and help this ward as we can. And even if no one responds to our efforts, we know the Lord will be pleased and we will have done our part.
Of Stones and Boomerangs
in Prayers and Testimonies
Posted
Very well said!