(This information is as of July 16, 2024). Hi, I'm Shawn, the spouse of Nicole (pictured), and we're finally starting to see the light at the end of a very long and stressful tunnel, but we have one more step to make before we can, as the kids say, "touch grass". Nicole suffered two herniated disks in her back in 2024 and was only approved for surgery to make repairs this past November. The surgery was scheduled and completed on December 19th, 2024, and we had hopes that this would be, at the least, the end of her pain, even if a new normal needed to be dealt with. From then to today, it has been a *grueling* crawl to where we are now. Two infections of the surgical site that ended up with Nicole being in the hospital for almost 45 days, a wound vac to heal the site that only came off a couple of weeks ago. It ended up being too much, and Nicole was forced to retire from her job with the Commonwealth of PA. Thankfully, a lot of very caring people helped us to bridge the financial gap up to now. The one thing that's holding up Nicole's retirement is the fact that because she had to take so much time off while officially "employed", at the time of her separation she had what the Commonwealth calls a "negative leave balance", which translates into money (based on her hourly pay rate) that is owed the state. If we pay it back on our own, then her retirement will start roughly 30 days after State Employees Retirement System (SERS) receives confirmation. If, however, SERS needs to repay the state through back retirement, the resulting process will add at least three months to the process before we receive the first payment, meaning we would not start to get the retirement money until December. Because of this, we're hopeful that this LFEBridge will raise the funds needed to make that payment so we can finally move forward with financial stability that we haven't had throughout 2024 so far. Many people that will see this participated in our first LFEBridge; to them, I cannot thank you enough for your help, kindness and generosity. We owe them everything. I am asking for the above in a separate LFEBridge because this is a very specific request for a very specific need and not a "moving goalpost" like the last situation. And I have reasonable confidence that we will be okay once we jump this final hurdle. If you are not in a position to help financially, or if you helped us get to this point, simply sharing this and telling a little bit of our story so that your friends and loved ones understand would be amazing. We're almost there. Thank you in advance for helping us bridge this final gap.
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