This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Carla Bacon, 69, who is caring for her 70-year-old husband while working a full-time job in Oklahoma. Bacon’s husband has slowly been recovering from a stroke, and they’ve had to go into medical debt to make ends meet. This interview has been edited for length and
My deeply Southern family raised me to never talk about money. We were poor, sometimes we lived in our car, and sometimes we were hungry. But we never said it out loud. Now, as a single mother of three children with significant medical needs, I have worked several jobs to pay for her children’s care
This essay as told is based on a conversation with Tamara Johnson, 58, who lives in Leesburg, Virginia. Johnson resigned from his corporate leadership position to take care of your husband. Johnson estimates her family has spent more than $700,000 so far caring for her mother and her husband. This interview has been edited for
