Pay for health insurance or pay the mortgage. That's what it's come down to for one Charlotte family with a sick daughter.
Kayleigh Anne Freeman was born 12 weeks early.
"She's been through the ringer, I'll tell you that," said her father, Adam.
Doctors said Kayleigh, who weighed just 1 pound at birth, wouldn't survive.
"She was one of the smallest babies to ever undergo heart surgery, open heart surgery," Adam said.
But Kayleigh is still fighting for her place in this world. At 8 months old, she weighs a mere 7 pounds.
"In the last week she's grown 200 grams," Adam said.
Kayleigh has never seen beyond the walls of the pediatric intensive care unit at Levine Children's Hospital.
"We just started holding her again. It had been two months since we held her," said Aimee, Kayleigh's mother.
Now, Kayleigh may never see the room her parents prepared for her.
"Our foreclosure date is set for March 30. We don't see how we're going to get around it," Aimee said.
By the time Kayleigh goes home, the Freemans will have been forced to move. Both were successful real estate agents before home sales began to dry up.
They have to pay their own health insurance, which costs $1,000 a month. And it's either pay the insurance or pay the mortgage.
"We don't want to have to worry about if a doctor will see or do a surgery, or every time they come in to do an X-ray or change a diaper, how much is that going to cost us?" Aimee said.
With the medical bills, the stress at the hospital and foreclosure coming, the Freemans are overwhelmed.
"We don't really know in 30 days where we are going to go or how we're going to pay for it," Aimee said.
But they're trying to stay grounded, remembering what's truly important.
"Even though we are going through such a tough financial situation -- we're losing the house, we barely can pay the insurance, we lost one car already -- that's not the point," Adam said. "The point is we were given something that we can handle. God doesn't give you anything you can't handle."
The Freemans say Kayleigh could go home in a month if she continues to improve. Then, she will need a nurse at home to monitor her for at least one year.
To learn more about the Freemans and how you can help, visit www.kayleighannefreeman.blogspot.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment