After I got back from the hospital, my recovery was painful and frankly embarrassing. I had to completely re-train my leg to work, because the muscle that used to run length-wise down next to my knee, now ran horizontally across my knee cap. Every time I moved my leg I felt like I was tearing my knee in half. I didn't handle the pain well either which made recovery take longer than anticipated. If I hadn't had my wedding only three months later, I don't think I would have Ben able to push myself as hard as I did. I went to therapy, got my leg back just enough to be able to hold my own weight during my wedding, so that was good. Unfortunately, no one would hire me before the wedding because they didn't like the idea of me taking off a week of work, for the honeymoon, so close after hiring me on. So We just decided that I would look for a job after we got back.
I looked, and applied to a lot of places but no one ever got back to me, apparently I was qualified for half of them, and for some reason, being able to type 20 words per minute isn't very impressive for a desk job of any kind. I was resigned to wait til I was fully recovered so I could find a job that I could actually do. Then, one day, I got sick.
Yes, I was pregnant. I didn't handle pregnancy very well at all... I couldn't even keep jester down. I lost a lot of weight at the beginning and then even more later on. I finally started gaining weight during my 6 month along, but I was still sick. Not just morning sickness, it was a 24/7 sickness. I think I spent more time in my bathroom than I did anywhere else in our apartment, and when I wasn't there, I was on the couch trying to not have to go back to the bathroom. Needless to say, I was in no condition to find a job. After the baby came, we decided it was more important to us that I stay home with the baby than for me to get a job. We knew that somehow, we would make it work and that we would be OK.
We were able to, fortunately, pay off the credit cards before the baby arrived, but during the two week paternity leave Justin was able to take off from work, his boss called him in, and informed him that as of the day before, he and everyone else at the company no longer had jobs. So there we were, a two week old baby, and no income! He immediately began the job hunt, but nothing came. After 2 weeks, we had burned through the little bit of money we had in the bank. Justin's parents were wonderful enough to give us a small loan that we could pay the necessary bills and buy food for a couple of months. We were able to make it last three months with careful budgeting. It took that long for Justin to get another job. We were lucky that he found one that quickly.
Once he started his new job, we got a loan from the bank to pay his parents back. We knew we would then be paying interest, but in our opinion, it was better than keeping money issues between us and his family.
We were finally able to breathe and start on the long road ahead of us to become debt free and self-reliant. But we now had hospital bills from the baby that were due, as well as hospital bills from Justin being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes only a few months before. Now we had a significant loan to repay as well as our monthly living expenses. Justin worked hard, but didn't make that much. It was enough to pay the monthly needs and the loan payment, but the hospital bills kept getting pushed back. Luckily, our tax return was able to pay off most of the hospital bills, but we would still be dealing with some of the hospital bills from our baby being born on his second birthday.
To be continued....
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 1
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 2
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 3
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 4
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Conclusion
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