Meet Leslie from Kosciusko County

Like many people, Leslie and her husband bought a house on payments and owned a “mom and pop” carpet laying business. Leslie had married her best friend and they had a wonderful daughter who was 8 years old. Life had its ups and downs and was OK until Leslie came home from work one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.

How do you get over losing your husband and best friend and help your 8 year old daughter make sense of what dad did?  Leslie was now a single mom with the same bills but less income. “Family helped, but we had always taken care of ourselves”, states Leslie. “We were an active family going to ballgames and school events. We didn’t sit around, but we did now and neither of us talked about the death. We could not understand or get through it.”

They realized we needed a change of scenery. The house was sold, a truck was rented, and they drove to Arizona. Leslie soon found a job as a manager at a carpet cleaning company and worked many, many hours which left her daughter by herself. “When you move to a new location, but still live out of boxes after almost two years, you realize you’re not home” shared Leslie. Professional counseling helped both of them and their relationship was heading in the right direction.

Arizona wasn’t home and there was family in Wisconsin, so they moved there. Leslie became employed fairly quickly through a non-profit agency called WEC (Wisconsin Energy Conservation) and they had time to volunteer at the Humane Society too.  The budget was cut for WEC and that ended a position that Leslie held for five years.

Family in Kosciusko County indicated that things were good here and she should come back. Leslie got a job with Zimmer but she didn’t feel as physically strong as she used to. She was at work when she noticed that her lips and fingernails were turning blue. She struggled through the rest of her shift and drove herself to the emergency room. After five hours, the results were inconclusive; she was sent home and told to see her family doctor tomorrow.  She left the hospital carrying her shoes because her feet had swollen so much while there – something was wrong. When she got home her daughter called a family member and they took Leslie to another ER where they immediately recognized that she had a heart problem and she had a heart attack while in the ER.

Forty-five days later, Leslie was released from the hospital with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). “I probably had pneumonia in the last year but didn’t go to the doctor”.

Leslie managed, with the help of Zimmer, to get through the employment contract period but had no energy when she got home. “Before, I would work overtime to pay the bills and put a little aside, but I couldn’t do that anymore. Just getting out of our home was difficult”.

The next thing you know, Leslie was back in the hospital for three weeks and as we all know, the bills don’t stop just cause we are sick.  Depression set in, and Leslie tried to take her life. Her daughter found her, called 911 and Leslie was back in the hospital, unconscious for 3 days. She was referred to a mental health clinic who helped her and gave her a script for anti-depressants.

Having the prescription was good but having the money to get the script refilled was another matter. Her daughter changed from going to school, to online school so she could take care of her mom and find a job. To make matters worse, the small amount of money the daughter made now disqualified Leslie for Medicaid. No Medicaid = no doctor visits = no anti depressants.

Depression returned and Leslie felt that she had trapped her daughter into a life she didn’t want her to have. After three months without anti-depressants and other meds, her daughter said that her mother had just given up and wanted her life to end and that she couldn’t stay and watch her mother die. 

Leslie said, "It broke my heart when my daughter moved to a friends’ home. She was only three houses away.  She stopped in every day to check on me but didn’t stay long; she loved me but couldn’t watch me slowly kill myself. I had stopped doing anything; washing my face or hair, brushing my teeth.”

Leslie could not say why she started searching the internet for help over the weekend. 

“I don’t sleep well and the network connection is fast when everybody else is asleep. I was looking for help and REAL Services kept coming up. I called them and left a message.  If they hadn’t called me back on Monday, I would have killed myself” Leslie said calmly. “I planned it, I had enough pills and I knew after my daughter checked on me that I had 24 hours for the pills to work.”

Christina from REAL Services arrived at Leslie's home on Tuesday and after seeing the condition of the home, the condition of Leslie herself, and talking to Leslie, she realized how close she was to ending it all.  Christina helped Leslie complete paperwork for Aged and Disabled Medicaid Waiver for which she qualified even with her daughter's income. This meant anti-depressants were available to her again and other services too.

The mobile home Leslie lived in was “really, really dirty” per Leslie. Depression does that to people and even if Leslie cared enough, she couldn’t physically do it all.  She could not even stand at the stove without feeling faint.

Christina recognized that Leslie needed additional services and applied for meals to be delivered to the house.  They come frozen and her daughter brings them in and puts them away. Leslie also has a helper who comes in three times a week to clean, cook, help her bathe, take her to the doctor, etc.

The best part says Leslie as she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, “I have my daughter back”!