UPDATE of the past 6-7 months

Jun 03, 2026

Tim, who currently has five stents in his stomach, is scheduled for his tenth surgery in July. Thanks to our excellent healthcare system, it took three separate hospital stays and over a month and a half for a young emergency room doctor to finally realize that it wasn’t just pancreatitis! Therefore, going home to rest and let his body heal itself, as we had been constantly advised, was never an option. What Tim actually has is called walled-off necrotizing pancreatitis.

Within two hours, the ER doctor had Tim transported to a hospital down south to where the only surgeon in the entire state of Florida capable of performing the life-saving procedures he needed was located! If you know Tim, you know he’s not the type of man who can sit still. He goes out of his way to help others and works hard every day for his family.

So, to witness him go from being the person he was to suddenly becoming completely incoherent and unable to have a single bite of food for nearly four months, on feeding tubes, and having to receive blood transfusions, etc., was one of the scariest things his children, family, and those who love him ever had to experience.

Not to mention the part where we discovered that the only option Tim had in terms of medical leave was 12 weeks of unpaid FMLA! Believing he had short and long-term medical leave (like most people do) and the fact that every year for the past eight years, when filling out his yearly insurance paperwork, etc., he always opted to pay into short and long-term medical leave.

However, it wasn’t until he was in the hospital, unconscious, and the possibility of him not coming home was all too real that we received a letter from a company named The Standard stating that he was denied the option to pay into short and long-term medical leave and coverage for himself due to the fact that he was diagnosed with arthritis!

Come to find out, this is a deeply troubling issue affecting firefighter-paramedics in the state of Florida— an issue that has become painfully real for my family.
Firefighter-paramedics dedicate their lives to protecting and saving others. They show up every day— physically, mentally, and emotionally— often at great personal risk. Yet under current policy, if a firefighter-paramedic has any pre-existing condition (even something as common and manageable as arthritis), they are automatically denied the ability to participate in short-term or long-term disability coverage.
As a further insult, they are told that this is acceptable because they have access to FMLA.
As you know, FMLA provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave— not income protection, not medical security— only job preservation, and only if the employee is able to fully recover and return to work within that narrow window.
This means that if a firefighter-paramedic experiences a sudden, acute, and completely unrelated medical emergency— such as a car accident, appendicitis, pancreatitis, cancer, or another catastrophic illness— they are left without income, without disability support, and without meaningful protection for their family.  
The message being sent is clear:
You may lose your home.
You may be unable to pay your bills.
You may struggle to feed your family.
But if you are fortunate enough to survive, heal, and return to work within 12 weeks, you will still have a job.

The total crash and burn part almost came when we found out that 12 weeks of unpaid FMLA was simply not enough time for Tim to be able to beat this condition, heal and be able to return to work.

Thankfully, Brevard County Fire Department found a way to extend his 12 weeks of unpaid FMLA. So even if his family loses everything, he still has a job to return to!

With that said, it has been an incredibly challenging time for all of us. However, we are so grateful that Tim is one of the most resilient people we know. He slowly but surely is able to eat on his own again and is getting stronger by the day!

We are praying that his upcoming procedure in July will hopefully be his last.

Thank you so much to everyone for your much-needed support and prayers! You cannot begin to imagine how grateful his family is!!

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