The past 15 months have been a challenge for my sister and her family. For those of you who don’t know, she has the same kidney disease that our mom and grandmother had. Last May (2023), she went to the hospital due to abdominal pain and learned that she would need to begin Peritoneal Dialysis. At that time, she had the Peritoneal Dialysis port (PD port) placed, and was required to receive user training to begin before she could return to work. Then in September, her PD port site became infected and she had an allergic reaction to the medication that was used to treat it, requiring her to miss another several days of work. In November, she had to have the PD port moved, as the location was causing irritation and making it prone to infection. This was another few days out of work.

Fast forward to April of this year, she had a stroke which required almost another week in the hospital, and several weeks of therapy before she could be medically cleared to return to work. She was out of work for a total of 8 week! As you can imagine, as the soul provider for her family, all of this time out of work has put her in a situation where It has been difficult to keep up with paying bills - especially with increased medical expenses and the cost of gas driving to and from appointments and for hospital stays. She is strong and a hard worker and has managed to keep her head above water. The girls have worked and pitched in to help the family as much as they could as well. 

The last week of July, my sister and her girls came to stay with us for a few days so that Amelia could go to the Mayo Clinic to start the process of getting on their kidney transplant list. While she was here, we thought she was coming down with something. When she returned home and finally made it to the doctor, she was started on antibiotics for an infection. After a few days and continuing to worsen, she returned to the doctor and was sent to the hospital yet again. That was this past Thursday and she is just now getting to go home today, and not out of the woods by any means as she was quite ill and will need to be on antibiotics for 10 more days. She isn’t quite sure when she will be able to return to work at this time.

Amelia and her girls are strong, tough, and hard workers, and definitely are not thrilled about the idea of asking for help. However, I have encouraged them to remember what our dad, Mack, used to say, “Not letting others help you when you need it, robs them of their opportunity to be blessed. So, don’t steal someone’s blessing!” The girls started back to school today, August 12, and they need to focus on school. Amelia needs to go home and rest in order to recover and not try to work so much overtime that she can’t even get well. It seems like just when they are getting caught back up, they get knocked down again. So, if you are able to give a hand to help them up, we would all greatly appreciate it.

I live so far away from them now and there’s only so much that my family and I can do, but together, if we all give what we can, we can give them the opportunity to catch their breath. It would give Amelia the ability to only work a normal number of hours for a time so that she can heal/recover, and the older girls could focus on school, extracurricular activities, and being a kid.

Thank you in advance for your prayers and support for my sister and her girls!