After we started our Total Money Makeover, we had a series of setbacks, that just seem to keep on coming. Here are a few of the setbacks that come to mind:
- 4/18/2015 - My car is totaled when a teenager is not paying attention and rear-ends my car.
- 6/18/2015 - Our son, Dylan is born! This is not so much a setback, but adds to the crazy. :D
- 11/27/2015 - Our daughter, Emma, has a severe croup attack. We could have lost her this day.
- 1/18/2016 - My wife, Kari, has her first symptoms of POTS.
- 4/18/2016 - Our daughter, Alyssa, breaks her arm falling off the slide in the backyard.
- 5/5/2016 - Our son, Christopher, goes to the emergency room after getting hit in the eye.
I call these setbacks, since many of them had a lot of emotional and financial implications. When my car was totaled, I didn't get much for it. It was one of those cars that is not worth much, but seems to keep on going and never die. The A/C never worked that well. In fact I was planning on getting the A/C fixed (again) the very week it was totaled. Fortunately, my brother was in the process of trying to sell his Honda CR-V. It worked out where I could just buy the car off him for a great price. And the A/C actually works! Or it did, for the first few months. I was tired of having a non-working A/C so, I we just had them put in a new compressor, and it has been working fine ever since.
By far the biggest setback in this list, is when Kari began having POTS symptoms. If you know anyone who has had POTS, then you will know that it can be a life-altering, and debilitating disease. The average time to diagnose POTS in a patient is 5 years and 11 months. We got lucky. In fact, after the first visit to the ER, my mother-in-law guessed that she may have POTS from some research she had done online and the symptoms Kari was reporting. Can you believe that? My mother-in-law, who barely knows how to use a computer, found this on her own. But yet, many, many doctors kept causing her to think it was all in her head and she just needs some antidepressants. I'll be honest, throughout all of the Dr. appointments and visits to the ER, I started to lose a lot of faith in the medical system as a whole. Most of the treatments that we found to help Kari deal with the symptoms were things that we found through our own research. Part of me wants to go back and tell all of those doctors, "Hey look, she had this medical condition called POTS all along. She wasn't crazy or depressed. She just had a medical condition that is commonly misdiagnosed! Thanks for not caring." I know the doctors were doing their best. I just feel like many of them are more concerned with ending the appointment and getting on to the next patient than actually trying to care for people and help them get better. Needless to say, three months later, we are finally gaining some traction on treating Kari's POTS. In fact, we are now going to a Faint, Fall, and Frailty clinic at the University of Utah, which specializes in this sort of thing. She is still only ~70% of her normal self, but that is much better than before. We have found ways to cope with the disease, and are getting back to a normal rhythm. She has been great throughout it all. She really is an amazing woman.
Despite all of these setbacks, Our Total Money Makeover Adventure continues! In fact, the Total Money Makeover has helped us make good financial decisions through all the turmoil with confidence. Life is great.