Trials and Blessings!

My husband is a diabetic with diabetic neuropathy in his feet.

In March, he stepped on a nail and walked around for half a day without realizing that he had a nail sticking in his foot.

He was headed to our trailer in Arkansas for a weekend of fishing with our grandson, so he loaded up his foot-doctoring supplies and headed out.

The following Sunday night, he came home and was pleased that his foot was looking good.

Monday, he went to work and was on his feet all day. Monday night, he showed me his foot, which was black and blue all over the top. My immediate thought was that he had dropped something really heavy on his foot. He said, "No. I haven't done anything but walk around on it all day."

He wasn't feeling very well, so he stayed home the next two days. In the meantime, I called his doctor for an appointment, but she was out of town for a week.

Wednesday night, I got home to find that his foot had a huge blister on top of his toe. He asked me what I thought, and I said, "I think we need to go to the ER!"

The ER doctor took one look and said, "We're admitting you for IV antibiotics."

By that time, the blister had ruptured and his foot looked like something out of a horror movie. My first thought was that he had that flesh-eating bacteria, and the doctor did order testing for that.

It turned out that my husband had a staph infection, a bone infection, and another kind of infection in his foot.

He was in the hospital for a week, but needed IV antibiotics at home for 4 more weeks.

Which would cost us about $4,500!

Our insurance would cover the cost of home health care, but NOT the cost of the medication. We had no clue as to what to do! We certainly did not have the money!

Praise the Lord for good friends!

For years, we have volunteered, along with our friends, with the Clydesdale Children's Christmas Store. Our main focus is provided needy children with toys, food and clothing at Christmas time, but we also provide small scholarships to deserving students and do fundraisers to help anyone with a genuine need throughout the year. This organization is entirely volunteer, with no salaries being paid out.

On Roger's last day in the hospital, the social worker came by and told us that she had good news for us.

The Clydesdale Children's Christmas Store was going to pay for the IV meds! We called our friends, Ronnie and Brenda, (with tears rolling down our cheeks!) to thank them. Ronnie was so sweet...he said that Roger had done so much for others (working fundraisers, cooking BBQ, etc.) that it was just time to help Roger.

I should also mention that the company providing the meds also agreed to reduce the price by $1200.

Because of their generosity, Roger did not lose any part of his foot and his foot began to heal nicely.

When his foot was nearly healed, we learned that Roger had 4 blockages in the arteries to his heart. He then had to have a quadruple bypass surgery.

Since my husband works in our family business, which is already suffering from the collapse of the housing industry, our income was virtually dropped to almost nothing. What little business we were doing was barely enough to pay our son, who kept the business going on his own.

In addition to the generosity of the Clydesdale Christmas Store "family", a whole bunch of friends threw a huge fundraiser for us, and raised enough money to keep us going through the months of recuperation that lay ahead.

God truly does answer our prayers. We are not out of the financial woods, yet, but we are rich in friends...friends who not only get to work and do what they can to help us out, but friends who offer up their prayers for us. We are truly blessed to have all these friends in our lives, and I thank God for them every day!

True friends are angels without wings who live on this earth and walk amongst us!

I am so proud to know so many angels!

Who are the angels in your lives?