On October 14, 2011, I was driving home with my friend from lunch. I clearly remember complaining to her about the expensive year we had already had, and I told her I was just ready for the year to be over so our luck would change! If there's one thing I've learned, you don't ever complain about something, because it can always get worse! Within a few hours of that conversation, my husband told me he had cancer. And let me tell ya, cancer isn't cheap!!!
Jared and I have always made the commitment to make good financial decisions. It hasn't always been fun, but we've never been overly stressed financially because of that commitment. And we've tried to follow the counsel from our church leaders, who counsel us to pay tithing, or 10% of our income to the church (this money doesn't go to leaders, it goes to the building of temples or church houses, among other things), to avoid debt whenever possible, and to try to have a "comfortable" savings. {And although talking about our finances makes me feel way too over-exposed, it is such a huge part of our story, and such a miracle, I feel I need to share it.}
Three months before Jared's diagnosis, we took a HUGE chunk of our savings and paid off our final car debt. And as mentioned before, we had been having an expensive year - Jared had been hospitalized for pulmonary embolisms, Drew had hernia surgery, and we had a baby. And on top of that, we had a our main water line outside of our house break, and to repair it we had to rip up part of our driveway, so that whole mess wasn't cheap, either. But even with all of this, we still had a savings that we both felt comfortable with.
After Jared was diagnosed, we discussed our finances briefly in the hospital, and we still felt okay. Luckily we had a maximum out-of-pocket that would certainly save us! And his employer had told us they had a bank of leave that would cover him through the end of November, so that was a HUGE blessing!
A few days before Jared was released from the rehab center, a nurse started discussing Jared's medications with me. They had already ordered a few. She started going over the costs, and I started getting nervous. Before this point, I hadn't even considered the costs of medication!!! She told me that his blood-thinners (which is pretty much a life-long need considering he had already had pulmonary embolisms) were going to be $900/month. (That was OUR portion, the actual cost was about $4500/month.) I think it took me about five minutes to breathe again. And I knew these were the minor medications - we had yet to find out what chemo would cost!
A couple days later we found out that we also had an out-of-pocket maximum on medications per year as well. We knew we would meet it within a few months just being on the blood-thinners alone, so we were happy to have another cap! So at this point, we knew the savings would be depleted, but we were still going to be okay.
The bills started piling in around the end of November. That was when we got the next shock. Our bill from the surgery and ICU was nearly $10,000. (The hospital we were sent to was NOT a contracted member, so the insurance only paid 80% of the bill. I knew at the time it wasn't a contracted hospital, but it was an emergency and the first hospital he went to was going to ambulance him over, we told them I would drive him. It was so late at night and everything was so rushed, we didn't really have time to think - nor did we think we had a choice. But this had been a concern in the back of my mind the entire time.) I was sick to my stomach. I figured at that point we were headed for financial ruin.
After investigation, I found out that the insurance only had us owing the hospital our out-of-pocket amount, so I tried to fight it. But it was immediately clear that it was a fight between the insurance and hospital, and the one that loses in those cases is the patient. The insurance was saying that due to the "special service agreement," the hospital had to honor the contracted amount, but the hospital told me this was something the insurance says all the time to get out of paying the full amount. So it wasn't looking too good. But the hospital said they'd run it back through.
Then we got a bill from pathology, and again, because they weren't a provider, our insurance didn't cover a dime. And that was $1,200. I knew we had no argument on this one. Yet they never got my "okay" on where to send the tumor! How did I know?
We also started getting bills for little dumb expenses that supposedly weren't covered. Apparently, in our current insurance system, they expect you to sit along-side the doctor in every procedure, and before they use any instrument or perform any procedure, you need to call the insurance to make sure it's an "okay-ed" thing. It's a joke! So I guess we had an out-of-pocket maximum, if you want to call it that. And we started having the same issue with our prescriptions. We got excuses all the time, like if it wasn't an approved dose, they'd charge us. So we were constantly out $50 here, $100 there even after we'd met the out-of-pocket max on prescriptions. I could say I hate the whole insurance "game," but I don't want to imagine where we'd be without it!!!
After the infection, there were uncertainties of new medical bills. We knew we shouldn't be paying for much, but there were always the unknowns of what was actually going to be covered and what wasn't. We had the ambulance ride, the new surgery and hospital stay, radiation treatments, constant labs, a nurse coming to the house weekly for his care, a physical therapist coming, then blood clots, a new doctor, even more labs and tests! But the biggest issue was that he wasn't able to work. He had already missed pretty much the entire month of December, and when January came around, he just wasn't physically capable of working. And we had more than exhausted his resources for leave. At that point we didn't know when he'd be returning to work, so we knew we had to at least secure his job by filing FMLA. Even if it was unpaid, it would at least hold his job and benefits (which were obviously essential).
That was a pretty scary reality. I don't care how much money someone has saved up, it goes real fast when you suddenly have no income on one side, and bills piling in on the other side. I was already so overwhelmed with everything else, I couldn't allow myself to dwell on our finances. I knew for certain it would cause a nervous breakdown. And I knew Jared was concerned about it, but it wasn't something I wanted him to worry about. He needed to focus on getting better!
This was the point where I truly thought we were done. I remember thinking Here we've tried so hard for all these years to be "smart" and follow the counsel of our religious leaders, and now we're done. I just didn't see how it could possibly work out. But every time I got really overwhelmed about the finances, I just knew for some reason it would work out. It had to. I knew the Lord wouldn't let us down when we'd tried so hard to do everything right.
That was about the point that we started seeing little miracles. I received a new bill from the hospital, this time for the adjusted amount. (Now I must explain that I had received another bill in December AFTER trying to fight it, after they had re-processed it, and it was still $10,000. So at that point I thought it was a lost cause. For some reason they decided to adjust it.) We called and talked to the pathology lab and explained the situation, and they adjusted our bill to $110! I guess they just ate the $1,090 they didn't get paid. Then, through February I looked at our bank statement (something I didn't ever do because I didn't want to know!) and I noticed that we had continually received a paycheck. And I didn't understand why. I asked Jared if he knew what was going on and he didn't know. He found out that his co-workers had been donating so much time that it was covering the months he'd been missing. Over the period of FOUR MONTHS without working, we only went two weeks without a paycheck! Pretty remarkable. We can't possibly thank his co-workers enough for this huge miracle, other than to say they were an answer to our prayers.
As I filled out a tithing slip in March, an overwhelming feeling of gratitude overcame me as I realized that this was literally the Lord's money I was paying a tithe on. He hadn't let us down!
At this point, a year later, our finances are the same, if not better than they were a year ago. I can't explain it, other than to know that the Lord has had a big hand in it.
