I have a degenerative neurological disease called Multiple System Atrophy. I was diganosed 4 years ago. Since then our lives have changed. I spend a lot of time at doctor's offices. I spend a lot of time in the emergency rooms. We had to sell our home to keep from foreclosure. I have mini seizures on a regular basis due to my disease, so it is hard to have any place that is not a one floor home. Otherwise I fall down stairs and hurt myself.  So we rent an appartment. My husband lost his job in the spring and with the economy the way it is, he is having huge difficulty finding something. He did just pick up part time seasonal work (about 15 hours per wee) for $7 an hour. So much for a college education helping you get a good paying job.  We can barely pay the rent and bills every month with my social security disabillty. That does not include grocereis. We have to go to Catholic Charities and Johnson County to get help with groceries. Our kids are 12 and 13. Thank God that they understand Christmas is about giving and they do not believe in Santa. They are in need of new clothes since they have out grown their current clothes and we can not even afford to do that let alone anything fun for Christmas. We had a disscussion with them on the day before Thanksgiving about how Christmas will be just about spending time with each other and not about gifts this year. That is one of the hardest talks to have with your kids. "It's ok mom...." "You know we love you mom..." But the topper of everything is that Saturday morning we went to get in our family car, a 12 year old minivan, and it was stolen. We lost some items that were in the car. Nothing worth stealing for anyone else, but sentimental for our family. Things that we can not afford to replace. We even just borrowed $300 2 weeks ago from a friend of ours to get the car fixed so that we could still get around. It will take us forever to pay her off normally. Now we do not know what to do. If we are lucky insurance might give us $1000. There is no way that we can afford to buy anything and there is no way that we could qualify for a car loan anywhere. It will now be almost impossible for my husband to find a job anywhere with out a way to get there and how do I get to my doctor appointments? We give our time to Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and the school PTAs. I just wonder what we could have done to deserve this. I think we are good people who try really hard, but somehow we only seem to have bad luck.
 
They will receive a car at Harrahs on Dec 21st