I am a 65 year old woman that is the primary caregiver for my 34 year old disabled son. He has the most severe form of spastic quadriplegia & he is profoundly intellectually disabled. He is literally akin to a 6 month old in a man's body. He is only able to communicate using laughs & cries and he needs total care including managing many medications delivered orally & through an implanted pump, a feeding tube, & he is completely incontinent.
Between his father, my current husband, & I we make do with the occasional attendant.
My son has separation anxiety & we rarely leave our home together. My husband works from home to assist in his care & my son's father works full-time & has my son on the weekends. This has been our life since my boy "graduated" from public school 12 years ago.
Anyway, my husband & I finally found our "forever until the grave" home. It is completely handicap accessible: ramps, wide walkways & doorways & roll-in showers. Our only issue is that we needed to add a very large room for our Boy. This addition has just been finished & we have to be out of our rental home by 5/31. We have been paying for two homes during the renovations.
Bottom line is that we have not only spent all our savings but have taken out a home equity loan to pay for everything. And now we need to purchase durable medical equipment to adequately use our new space.
I am at a loss as to how we are going to afford new equipment & get some of our debt paid off so we can stop using credit just to get by. So, I have been considering starting a GoFundMe to help. My dilemma is that we have never taken any kind of charity in all these years. But, we are definitely not getting any younger & having this much debt at this age is terrifying. And we still need to make sure we can leave funds for our Son in case he survives us.
Would something like a GoFundMe even be appropriate? Should they only be used for families that are destitute & not just overwhelmed? Should we even care what our family & friends might think? Any advice will be appreciated.