My husband teaches high school. He is paid enough that we do not qualify for financial aid, but we cannot afford the bills. I had a perforated ulcer on Valentine's Day, and our insurance is horrible and has a $7500 deductible. We negotiated with the medical places I owe money to. However, my mental health issues are bad. Every time I try to work, I nearly end up in a psych hospital with depression, anxiety & panic, so I don't bring in income. My retiring pdoc of 10 years told me after my last failed job attempt that she feels my condition is disabling enough that I should not attempt working outside the home if I want to be there for my daughter. My daughter is 10, and her pediatrician believes she has sensory processing disorder, and we can't get occupational therapy for that which she badly needs, especially in dealing with noise. Every time I try for aid, I am denied. Texas seems to be an especially harsh and hard state to get any sort of aid or advocacy. We cannot make the mortgage on my husband's salary. When we bought our house, he had a good job at NASA but as the government kept cutting funding for NASA, he was downsized and downsized and downsized out. He worked for 2 startup companies that failed. He has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from a Nobel Prize winner (Rick Smalley, deceased) and can't find work. No one told him when he got his Ph.D. at Rice University that he should major in chemical engineering as that is what the chemical plants around Houston want. Instead, his degree is in Physical Chemistry. He said it would have been a small alteration of classes to get a degree in chemical engineering, but he thought having a Ph.D. from a Nobel Prize winner would be enough. It wasn't. He has no first author publications, and that is everything in getting a university job.

I'm on a ton of medication. We can't pay our bills. I can't work. We have nowhere to turn.

I go to the pdoc and am told that in the interest of my mental health it's best not to work. I paid $80 to hear that (because of my husband's high insurance deductible, we must pay $7500 out off pocket, full cost for everything before the insurance pays and then when they pay $2500 of the $7500 deductible must be under your name, each family member has to reach $2500 before the insurance will pay for them. And I leave with a boatload of prescriptions. Not to mention, my husband is on thyroid & cholesterol medication. My daughter inherited my poor vision, and glasses for each of us cost $500 or more.

We don't live a fancy life. Our house was built in 1964, is around 1400 sq ft. We drive old vehicles, a 1995 model and a 2007 model (needing constant car repairs). We have big bills any time the air conditioning breaks. It sounds as if our refrigerator wants to go out next. We get heaped with nothing but bad news, and I feel like I put us in this situation with my stupid mental health problems. If I could just hold a job without nearly having to go IP every time. Ugh!