Our “I Have Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Help Me Help My Husband.” Give-a-Little page
First of all, I would like to thank all of you who have helped and supported me and my family in so many different ways — your prayers above all, your time and effort that you’ve shared with us to make our lives less chaotic, all your blessings that you’ve shared with us. From the deepest part of my whole being, thank you very, very much!
Making a crowdfunding page like this was never easy for me. The truth is that asking for any kind of help has never been easy. And even accepting help that was voluntarily offered has not been easy as well because no matter how much we need help nowadays, we consider that the people around us have their own needs to look after. Most of the people who have offered help to us have their own children and families to look after too and many of them are also working.
It took me two weeks before I was able to make up my mind to make this give-a-little page. I honestly didn’t want to. I grew up believing that if I need to earn something, I have to work hard for it. I grew up believing that it is always better to give than to receive. I was worried that we might receive greater than how much we actually need; however, we don’t really know how much we actually need for the time being. Because no one knows when I can get back to my normal condition and this is the sadder part. The saddest part is that I don’t know when I will be fully capable again to look after my children the way I used to.
However, I had to do something — something to help my husband, something for my family.
To all the questioning minds, a social worker already came to us to figure out if we could get something from WINZ, etc. We even actually checked on that one even before a social worker came to us. Apparently, there’s a very, very little possibility that we can get any. It’s all about the thresholds and the ages of our little ones. And we’ve got the very urgent need at the moment. We need to put our children to a good and reliable childcare centre the soonest time possible so that my husband can already complete his 40 hours/week at work… so that we can bounce back up when it comes to our finances…moreso, so that my husband would not lose his job…and above all, so that my husband wouldn’t have to put his health at risk by working until three or four in the morning while he would have to wake up at around five or six in the morning once our baby wakes up.
It would have been so much easier if we were eligible to receive some benefits from WINZ. I would’ve not needed to expose our financial struggles during these days in public. My families, relatives and friends in the Philippines and US or wherever they are now would’ve not been too worried about us.
But there are more important and more urgent matters for me to look after than my ego and worrying about what other people believe and think of. And these are what matter to me the most: my husband, my children and my full recovery.