Who we are

My name is Brenda. I am 27 years old and have lived my entire life in Tioga County Pennsylvania. I married a wonderful man on October 2, 2010. His name is Richard (Rick). Rick is a diabetic. In fact, his father, mother and sister are diabetics as well. In 2011, we had a very rough year. Our year started off with both of us being laid off from our jobs (we worked in the same place). Started new jobs in April, Rick was laid off from that job in July then started a new job in September. I left that job in October (I'll write a blog about that later) and started a new job right after. Then in November, Rick wasn't feeling very good. In fact, it was the weekend of Thanksgiving this started.
Parts of his body began to swell and it was becoming uncomfortable. I quit my job again in the first couple of weeks of December. Rick started to feel worse, so we took him to the emergency room. This was a huge step of faith for us because we didn't have any type of health insurance, and neither of us working, we had no clue what was going to happen, or what we were in for in the weeks to come.
The emergency room doctor's were worried we were looking at heart failure. We were admitted that evening. While he was in the hospital, I re-applied at the job we were at the previous year, as their business had picked back up, and while we were called back, had already started another job and had decided to stay.
So many tests were ran and it was nerve wracking waiting. My car needed to get worked on, so my mom and I were driving to my uncles when we got the call. Rick was diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome. I had no clue what that was, except that it was kidney's.
My grandfather had had some kidney problems and was working with a good specialist that helped regain his kidney function back up to 100%, so we requested this doctor. 
We were released from the hospital right before Christmas after spending a week there. I couldn't imagine what the bill would look like. As soon as we were discharged, we went over to the Assistance Office (we had the hospital bill with us, if I remember correctly, it was somewhere around $15,000). She told me that we would not qualify for medical assistance because I was about to start a new job and I would make too much money. I continued to push her a little bit, and she finally consented and said she would try since we had a copy of the bill. Well of course, Rick qualified, I didn't. That's okay though, he needed it more than I did. And they were able to backdate it to December 1, which covered his entire hospital stay.

We had 1 hospital stay a month for 3 months. Each for 3-7 days. In March, Rick's foot had a callous that got infected. This was hospital stay number 3. They needed to do surgery on this. So here we are, dealing with Nephrotic Syndrome and now we have an infection in the foot.

It's been a long haul, but God is in control!