Backstory: My girlfriend was diagnosed with hepatitis C around 7 years ago. Since then she has led a normal life up until around three months ago. She started experiencing extremely bad stomach/liver pains once a month. She has been to the ER once and urgent care and her primary doctor many times. Now the pain has intensified - it is more common now as it follows soon after any time she has solid meal . The only results of the tests have been that her white blood count has fallen from 2.4 (Low) to 1.6 (Extremely Low). And the ultrasound showed that her spleen is unusually large. Basically she feels like her immune system is turning on itself attacking the scar tissue in her liver.
She has a colonoscopy and a liver biopsy scheduled for Monday. Previously she was working at a extremely high-end fashion boutique in La Jolla making minimum wage. Due to missing the last 3 days of work she was laid off on Friday. (is that even legal?)
Due to being jobless I wrote her a $600.00 check so she could continue to pay on her bills (health-care, student loans and a driving without registration ticket. Immediately after the check cleared a bankruptcy lawyer that we've never heard of was able to garnish $750 from the account and charge $150 processing fee from the ~$720 she had left in her account. No letter, no phone call just straight robbery. She has stayed on top of the payments to the state and collections agencies. We called her bank who couldn't reverse it and the attorney's number(closed early for the weekend). She literally has $0.00 now and her other bills haven't cleared.
She literally cried for 8 hours on Friday. I really hate sob stories but I'm completely lost as to what to do. I'd rather face the whole ordeal as a realist and have: plan A, B and C just encase things get worse.
Do I help her open another account so she can pay her bills? I don’t have any debt, make $45k in IT so I can cover the basic food, rent, car payment). I did our budget before emptying my savings to pay for my college tuition. I expected us to be able to skim by before I saw any of this coming.
What do I do to prevent her from giving up on life? What do I do financially to keep us afloat? Do I find us a financial counselor from my school? Do I take out student loans? If things get worse we could be looking at liver transplant how do you budget for such an event? Where do I start to get her current debt
TL:DR girlfriend is deathly sick, has surgery Monday – debt collectors were able to literally empty her bank account before closing doors for the weekend. And to top it off she was laid off due to calling in sick. Need advice how to help her avoid hitting rock bottom and giving up.
Submitted January 29, 2017 at 08:57PM by throwaway-sdiego http://ift.tt/2jHAel2
