I knew this court appearance was not going to go well. I sat waiting for the judge to call my name, and I listened to my 3 year old and 4 year old play in the background. I wondered where we would go. I wondered how we would make it work. Most of all, I wondered "How did we get here?" I began shaking when I thought about the string of bad luck that has happened to us since Covid hit. What will I tell the judge? I so desperately want to be heard. I want everyone to know that I am a good person, and I did everything I could to stop this from happening. Most of all, I wanted everyone to know that having an education and a good job doesn't make you immune to homelessness. However, none of that matters to the judge. His job is not as a counselor. His job is to uphold the law. Right now, the law is not on my side. Right now, I'm being evicted. My name gets called and before I know it, the judge asks "Do you have anything to say?" I mumbled something about how we had a string of bad luck and I was sorry. He couldn't even look me in the eye when he gave his order of eviction. Just like that, the timer and the difficult task of moving had begun and boy was that tick tock loud. I wanted to shut down. I wanted to go hug my kids. I wanted to not face reality, but I didn't have time to process. I had to pack an apartment, find a place to live, and move in 1 week. All with an autoimmune disorder that makes everyday living incredibly difficult.
In June of 2019, I began an amazing job. I loved my coworkers, the director was a wonderful boss to have and everything was so easy going and for once I felt like I could breathe. This job felt natural and I loved what I was doing. I was making 72,000 a year, which is top of the pay bracket for my job of being a physical therapist assistant. Life was so good. My husband and I talked about getting our credit back on track, and saving up to buy a house. We talked about how we should send our kids to a gymnastics class since we had a little extra money, and since they both were so active. We talked about paying off our car and becoming debt free. I really wish this was the path that my life took. Unfortunately, though, my life path went a different direction. In December of 2019, right at Christmas, my whole family became very sick. The kids took all day to open presents on Christmas, because they were too sick to do it all at once. The kids got over their illness within about a week. My husband was the lucky one who was only sick for a day or two. I was too ill to work for about 6 weeks. Four weeks of this illness I ran high fevers every night, going up to 104.1 at one point, and sometimes I had fevers during the day too. It started with the worst sore throat I have ever had. Then it turned into a cough that lingered forever. Turning over in bed would cause me to become short of breath. I went to the ER 3 times with this illness, and was never taken seriously. One doctor didn't even listen to my heart or lungs, he didn't prescribe anything, he just said, "yeah the flu is really bad this year, but you're not going to die, just go home and rest." I think that was the night my fever went to 104, but I guess he's right, I didn't die. No one could tell me what I really had. At one point my PCP told me it was mono, but along with this blood test, he ran a lot of different tests, and one of them that came back abnormal was my anti-nuclear antibodies (or ANA) test. He told me we needed to schedule an appointment with a rheumatologist, but that should wait until I'm feeling better from this illness.
Finally I recovered enough to return to work, and of course by this time everyone knew about covid-19. Things had not shut down yet, but everyone was starting to wear masks and we as a home health company were trying to get advice from our home office as to what to do when we go to see patients. We started to have daily calls where we would discuss what changes to protocol were happening and how we needed to treat patients differently. Not long after that elective surgeries were held off, and our physical therapy staff was reduced to hardly any visits. I kept waiting for this influx of patients that we were supposed to get because doctors didn't want to send their elderly patients into outpatient therapy, but it just never came. The nurses were busy, but not our physical therapy department. On June 1, 2020, we had a meeting including our Fort Worth and our Dallas branch of employees. Corporate told us that they would be closing both offices. Here we are in the middle of a health crisis, and my company is closing their doors. At least it should be easy to find work, right? Unfortunately it was not. Medicare changed some laws about the way that home health therapy and skilled nursing therapy was billed. It wasn't supposed to create a job shortage, but it did. In the meantime, schools continue to tell the incoming classes that therapy is a growing field with the baby boomer population starting to need knee replacements and hip replacements and so forth; and for the most part it is a growing field and easy to find work, if you're a new graduate. If you have been in the field for 15 years, like me, it was a little harder finding work. I didn't need a 72,000/year salary, I just needed a job, but I couldn't even get an interview. I applied to every job I could find, in both Dallas and Fort Worth, and even some of the outlying cities. I was able to find PRN work, but PRN stands for "as needed," so there's no set schedule and you are not guaranteed work. I was able to piece together a full time schedule for awhile, but then it slowly died down. In the meantime, my husband, who was working two jobs, lost both of them. All of a sudden we went to a zero income family. So I applied for unemployment, and I reported my work as directed. Some weeks, I didn't get an unemployment check, some weeks I did. I thought, maybe we are finally going to get some relief so we can figure out what to do next. I was very, very wrong.
At this point, I had decided to go back to school for nursing. I have always loved the nursing field, and obviously nurses are in high demand. I was really excited. I decided to not renew my physical therapist assistant license, mainly because we didn't have the extra money and I was not getting many offers for PRN work, so the cost did not make sense to me. That meant that I couldn't accept any home health patients that were offered to me if their episode certification date extended past my license renewal date. In other words, I can't accept a patient to see, if I won't be licensed to see them. So I declined a visit. Of course the Texas Workforce Commission asked for an audit. After the audit, I was denied future benefits and instructed to return all money given to me after the date I refused work. It came out to about $3000. Now I had no money from either my job or the unemployment, and my husband still didn't have new work. We had zero income. I appealed the decision and was put on a waiting list. Thankfully there was a new program called Texas Rent Relief that was created just for these situations. People that couldn't pay their rent could apply for any back rent to be paid, and for up to 3 months of future rent to be paid, to allow you time to get your feet again. We applied and it took several months to get an answer, but we were finally approved. By the time we were approved, our lease was up on the apartment, and because we didn't have a new lease in place, we could not get future rent benefits. So we actually were just able to get our landlord paid for back rent, and about 1/2 a month of future rent. By the time we had appealed and learned that we were not getting a full 3 months of future rent, we had already signed the new lease, thinking that we would have a couple of months to get things in order. Unfortunately, in the meantime, we had to wait 90 days to reapply, so by the time we could reapply, we were already 3 months behind on rent. Finally, I found a full time job doing massage therapy, which I also have a license to practice (but remember during the pandemic the massage establishments were one of the first to close). I began working in massage. I was really enjoying my work, and was excited to get things back on track so I can start nursing school. Within the first 3 weeks of working, I started having a lot of pain in my thumb and wrist. Of course with my knowledge in injury prevention, I realized I was doing too much and it was an overuse injury. I spoke with my manager and she reduced my hours. I eased my way back into full time work, and then started having severe exhaustion. I was feeling dizzy and short of breath during the massages and when I came home from work, I would pass out, and be unable to cook or spend time with my family. I scheduled a doctor's appointment and they reminded me of the positive ANA test that I had one and a half years earlier. Over the course of the next 3 months, I became more and more weak. If I did too much one day, I would need help walking the next. I experienced severe brain fog where I couldn't remember my children's name at times. I also had difficulty doing basic math. I could sleep for 18 hours and still feel exhausted, and the simplest of tasks would cause me to become short of breath and shaky. I was no longer able to work, even though I wanted to, and needed to desperately.
By this time, we still had not heard anything about our application for more funding for Texas Rent Relief, and we were given notice that we were being evicted. I went before the judge the first time, and we were given 60 days to obtain more funding, or we would be evicted. Surely we would get funds from Texas Rent Relief, right? Or maybe Texas Workforce Commission would finally have the appeal that I had asked for 8 months previously. In the meantime, we were on food stamps for the first time in our lives. We were getting behind on utilities, car payments, health insurance premiums (which we needed for me to be able to see a doctor), and our kids were outgrowing their clothes. I started treatment but it would take 3 months to start noticing a difference. I ask if there is any other treatment protocol we can try, because I have to get back to work. I saw the pity in the doctor's eyes, and that's when I realized I may not return to work. I did everything I could do, but none of it was enough. My husband was able to find work at Amazon, making $15/hour. By the time we pay for health insurance for us and the kids, his weekly check is less than $300. Rent at a 2 bedroom apartment for low income individuals is roughly $1100-$1200/month. We talked about where to go, how to pay this back rent, would we get more funding through Texas Rent Relief. We looked into other government programs, we contacted charities, we tried every avenue we could think of; and before we knew it, 60 days had come and gone, and it was time to go before the judge one last time. Three days before the court date, we heard from Texas Rent Relief that they ran out of funding and we would not be awarded more relief. We tried looking for more apartments, but every apartment we have applied for has denied our application because we have an eviction on our record, we owe back rent, and we have multiple collections on our credit report. We are 1 week away from losing our car because we can't make payments. We are relying on family and friends to help us with the cheapest hotel we can find, hoping that somehow a miracle will happen. In the meantime, we lost food stamps because of an error in processing our application. We currently have 10 packets of Ramen, 1/2 a loaf of bread, 3 slices of ham, a couple of tortillas, some chicken broth and about 1/2 cup of shredded cheese. We also have some condiments like ketchup and mustard, but we can't exactly feed our children ketchup for dinner. My husband goes out making deliveries for Favor when he isn't at Amazon or sleeping. He usually can afford a couple more grocery items after doing deliveries. My parents are are gone, so I can’t turn to them. My aunts/uncles are elderly and living on a fixed income, so is my mother in law. My sister has helped us previously, but I guess she wrote us off because I haven't heard from her in a few months. I'm not really sure where we will be in one week. I don't know if we will have a roof over our head, or a car to get to work. I don't know if my kids will be taken from me because I can't provide for them; and every day that passes I feel depressed and angry that I have an autoimmune disorder that is keeping me from work. I would gladly take a job, any job, even multiple jobs, but I simply can't. I have applied for disability, but it takes 3-6 months to hear back and only 27% of the applications are approved initially. I would apply for section 8 housing, but the wait list is typically 12-18 months. I have $-267 in my checking account, and my husband has less than $70 in his. I'm not sure what will happen, but I have to continue to hope that I will eventually feel better and am able to work soon. I also have to hope that we can find housing soon, so we don't continue to waste money on a hotel. I really hope by the time you read this, that something will have changed. I also sincerely pray that no one ever experiences these problems that we have had. It is heartbreaking to know that my 3 and 4 year old have already been homeless, and there's no end in sight. Please pray for us, and have compassion for those that have been homeless. No one chooses this option, and not all of us are drug addicts or alcoholics. Some of us have just had a really difficult time.
