The future is still bright for 3Dogs - Take Two

So, the story so far - part two:

So there we were, tootling along nicely but running up debts left right and centre – thing is Mr 3Dogs left all the finances to me and I kept the problems we were having from him.

Hubbie had always had on and off problems with his back that led to short times off work but in May 1996 (Ooops I made a silly mistake there - should be 2006) his back really gave out on him and he was off work long-term. In July of that year, the firm he worked for went bust, so he was left without work but not fit to look for another job. We only had my pension and his Incapacity Benefit with a tiny amount of Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefit against a rent of £500 a month!! The only way we managed to survive was to start selling our stuff at the car boot. Of course, eventually he got some redundancy money, etc but he hadn’t been with the firm that long really in terms of pay-out. And of course remember, we had still not learnt how to budget and service our debts properly, so what did we do? ........ well at the end of 1995 2005 we had booked a holiday to Ireland for the following autumn and rather than cancel it as we should of (I did not tell him about our debts) and we went - we thought we might as well have that holiday as we may not manage to get another as it would be hard this time for him to get another job at his age (at that time he was just coming up to 57) – and with that money we had a really good holiday too .........

Afterwards, we returned to the bills, and again I said nothing – until the day it all came out when he saw some court documents and Mr 3Dogs hit the roof asking why we had gone on holiday when we owed £1,500 in Water Rates. I said that I had been frightened and embarrassed to tell him. Anyway, we sorted that out and went on as normal – but I still didn’t tell him about the other debts and it was all affecting my health by now......................... ...................

....................... to be continued

So, the story so far - part four:

With hubbie working, although it was still a struggle, I was paying some debts regularly but I was ignoring some – it’s that case of robbing Peter to pay Paul again – it was only when something came up that I could not ignore that I paid some debts. I’m sure that most of your will be familiar to all this head in the sand stuff – hubbie knew that we were struggling a bit but, as he left it all to me, it was quite easy to hide some debts from him – getting behind with Council Tax and having, eventually, after a liability order, to come to an arrangement. My main problem is a part of my depression, where I say I will do something, but don’t do it that day – I’d tell myself that I would sort things the next day or the next month when things would be better, but they never were better, so they were put off yet again. I was doing a budget and just about keeping to it, but ignoring some debts and expenses completely

On 1st October of that year (2007), when Mr 3Dogs had been working in this job for just short of a year, he came into the bedroom one Monday morning as he was getting ready and told me that he was passing blood in his wee. I immediately got on the phone to the docs and they fixed him up with an appointment with the nurse. She said that it was probably an infection and gave him antibiotics, telling him to come back and see his doctor if things were no better when the 7-day course was finished. The next night we were at a village hall auction and he came back from the loo looking ashen-faced saying that his wee was now full blood red, with clots of blood in it. The next morning I got him an urgent appointment with a doctor, who checked him for prostate problems but it was all clear. So he referred him to the hospital for checks just to be on the safe side, saying that it could well still be just an infection.

After some tests (x-rays, cystoscopy (camera up his you-know-what), ultra-sound, etc) he saw the Urology Specialist on 21st November who said that he had a wart on the lining of his bladder which would need to be removed. Work was very slow at that time and there had been talk of redundancies but that was the last thing on our minds. Anyway, he was booked in for his op for 12th December, and the day before, he was told that he was to be made redundant that week and would not need to come back after his op – lovely we thought, that’s all we need. So he went in for the op on the morning of the Wednesday, and was the last one to be seen, after lunch. He was told that he would have to leave the catheter in for a couple of days and to come back on the Friday to have it removed.

He spent a very uncomfortable and painful two days with that catheter in, and went back as advised on the Friday. Again, he had to wait to be seen, but they said it was because they were waiting for his treatment to come down. They said it could not be ordered/mixed or whatever beforehand so they had to do that as soon as he checked in and then wait for it to arrive. After about a 4 hour wait, two men came to his bedside with equipment and closed the curtains, asking him if this was the first time he’d had this done. We assumed they meant the op so said yes, and one of them explained that they would feed the Mitamycin through the catheter and it had to stay there for 20 minutes, if he could manage it for that time, explaining that if the chemo was too much before the 20 minutes were up, he could call a nurse and they would flush it out sooner. Then they went away leaving us very puzzled and worried. We just turned to each other and both mouthed the word ‘‘chemotherapy’, no one had mentioned that. I went off to ask the nurse who said that it was just precautionary in case anything was there, which I told hubbie, but we were both stunned. The next day we asked a friend who is a nurse, and she looked aghast when I told her and just shook her head. No-one wanted to say the ‘C’ word of course.

Anyway, 2 weeks later he went for another cystoscopy at the hospital and then saw his specialist who immediately told him that the results were very good and it he himself had to have cancer, the type hubbie had was the sort he’d want. He gave us leaflets and explained that it had been a Superficial Bladder Cancer or First Level cancer growth and appeared to have been removed completely and was healing well. He then left us with hubbie’s Support Nurse who went through the leaflet with us and what it all involved, before asking us if we had any questions ...... cough cough questions?????? ...... We told her that today was the very first time that cancer had been mentioned and that we were shocked. We explained what had happened so far and what we had been told, and she apologised, saying that another patient had said exactly the same and she would have to have words to the specialist so this did not happen again. We then went home in shock and I read through the leaflet properly. It appeared that hubbie's cancer had been caught relatively early and before it could expand and spread, and at that stage the prognosis was very good. Still it took a long time to come to the realisation that he’d had a cancer removed, and we both took a long long look at what might have happened. After all, had hubbie followed the advice of the nurse and waited until the 7-day course of antibiotics was finished, he would not have gone back as the blood had stopped by the 6th day!!!!!!!!!!!! Just what would have happened then??????? He would have been none the wiser unless and until the blood started again – it could have been months or years, you just don’t know, and what would the growth have done by then??? Were might it have spread?????

So there we were – hubbie with no job and faced with the prospects of 5 years of regular cystoscopy checks until he could be given the all clear. With all this on our minds, things were about to change ......................... ...................


....................... to be continued


Edit: I need to add that this part of the story has a happy ending, so far anyway, so please do not have nightmares

So, the story so far - part six:

So where were we? ......... Ah Yes – May 2008 – in our new little bungalow and joining the slimming club, and still in so much debt.

The difference for me was that Mr 3Dogs was at home all the time now. That made hiding the debts so much more difficult. At least we weren’t getting too many phone calls at that point. But the persistent one was for the car – the actual loan period had finished in February 2008, and the insurance company, who had been covering our payments, did not pay the last due payment as it was for 29 days when they only pay out for periods of 30 days :mad: And of course, we had some payments which had been added to the end of the term still to pay. But there was no way we could pay them, so we ignored them. When they rang we told them that we just could not meet the payments due to the income we had now, consisting of Incapacity Benefit for both of us plus my Civil Service Pension. But they just kept ringing and sending letters (of course).

At the end of March, we decided to take the car off the road and our friend sold us their small white van, which we were to pay for as and when we could. As well as anything, the van was much more economical as it was diesel, so we got twice as many miles per gallon, but also the road tax was much less, as the PT Cruiser was one of those cars on which road tax was vastly increasing. This meant that the car was just sitting there in our resident parking, not being used.

By this time, Mr 3Dogs was much more laid back about everything due in part to the cancer giving him a different perspective of life, but also due to the meds he was now on. He kept saying ‘well if we ain’t got it, they can’t have it, can they? Let them take the bl***y car back”, which of course was right. Eventually we settled on paying them £10 per month as this was all we could afford. Then after several phone calls and being told lots of conflicting information, we decided to sell the car. The lender, Bl*ck H*rse said we could sell it but it would show up on an HPI check, which would not be a problem if potential buyer rang them at the time, and they would confirm that any shortfall would still be down to us, not the buyer. By this time, the debt had been passed to an outside company, who sent demands and when I spoke to the guy dealing with it and explained what we planned to do, he said “you can’t do that, the car doesn’t belong to you”. He did, however, recommend ‘voluntary surrender’ of the vehicle and he arranged to visit us to sort this out. We just wanted rid of the car by now. He came in June and we signed the car over for the voluntary surrender, with him telling us that the car would be collected, put to auction, with the amount coming off the balance and we would then come to an arrangement over any balance outstanding. He said it was better for us to have dealt with them rather than Bl*ck H*rse as it would mean less charges being added to the balance. So it was arranged that the car would be collected and that we would then be informed of the balance then due. They came to collect the car on 15th July 2008 – I know the date because it was my birthday

I need to point something out here. Although Mr 3Dogs had agreed to all this, he would not deal with the letters, calls or this visit himself. I had to deal with it all, as he could not face it or them himself. The debt was in his name but early on I had put a letter in to the company authorising me to deal on his behalf, and had dealt with everything concerning it, including the insurance and surrender.

And so we waited and waited for news from them. The next thing we knew was a demand for over £2,100, when we had only owed 5 late payment of £216 making £1580, and they had sold the car. Statements showed massive amounts of charges and a credit of only £600 for the car, so even though we had lost the car, we owed them more than we had beforehand. It was at this point that Mr 3Dogs actually saw the full extent of what we owed to them, as up to then he only thought we owed about £600, but he accepted it well, repeating what his best mate is always saying “what it is, is what it is”. He understood that times had been hard and it was not surprising that we owed that much. So far so good then.

Slimming was going well. We had weighed in at 20 stone 4 ½ lbs for Mr 3Dogs and exactly 19 stones for me :eek: the heaviest either of us had ever been, so it was not surprising that our health had suffered, was it? However, by the end of that year Mr 3Dogs had lost 5 ½ stones and I had lost 2 stone 9 lbs. My lack of mobility restricted my losses, and I seemed to achieve about half what Mr 3Dogs did all the way through, which was quite maddening at times as I followed the plan exactly and he cheated with cakes and things when I wasn’t looking!! :mad:

And in February 2009, Mr 3Dogs and I won the class title of Mr & Mrs of the Year having lost 9 stone between us. Mr 3Dogs had done the best (as men tend to do) with a loss of 6 stone, and I had lost 3 stone, so we were well pleased, and looking forward to more losses to come. And we were in the local papers too.

So to summarise the debt position at that time, as far as Mr 3Dogs was aware, we owed Bl*ck H*rse Finance £2,100, Mr 3Dogs’ Jacamo catalogue about £500 and Capit*l One about £600 on his credit card. He also knew that I owed an amount to my Shoe Tailor catalogue and that we had got behind a bit on our rent after some robbing Peter to pay Paul. What he did not know about was my credit card balance, and outstanding overdrafts on 2 closed accounts :eek: Plus he thought that I had cleared an old Empire Stores catalogue debt and an HP account on our TV (Mr 3Dogs just had to have a 32” LCD TV when they first came out – I should have said no, but .............. ). With or income being what it was, I had struggled to pay everything, but ended up payin very little, doing it all on my own. Thing were coming to a head ............................................



....................... to be continued

So, the story so far - part eight:

In early 2010, we were getting pressured by two creditors in particular, Mr 3Dogs’ Jacamo catalogue and the company dealing with the balance due on the surrendered car. Jacamo had passed the debt to in-house Reliable Collections, who kept pushing for more money than the £20 we were paying, as were close Credit Management, dealing with the car debt. The phone was ringing several times a day at this point. Sometimes I answered it but most times I just let it ring.

I had been reading the MSE guides and forums and getting to know a little more about how people could deal with their debt, the people you could get help from, and the various options available.

Then one day at the end of February 2010, I answered a call from Reliable collections regarding Mr 3Dogs’ Jacamo account balance. I had been paying them £20 a month, but I’d had to reduce that to £10 a couple of months before when I was struggling again. They wanted the payment returned to the £20 immediately and I confirmed that we just could not afford it. The chap was going on and on, and then said “look, you either have to pay £20 a month or we put you in touch with a company who will take, say, £50 a month and they take a fee of £8 and then pay the rest to all your creditors – one way or another, you must deal with this”. Now this suddenly rang some bells with me and I just said that I would need to talk it over with my husband.

So I logged-on to MSE and checked the Debt Problems advice guide. I had realised, during that call, that what the DCA was telling me to do was to go through a fee-paying debt management company, and I knew that this was frowned upon on MSE. I looked up the references to CCCS, National Debtline, Citizens Advice Bureau, etc and went off to check their sites. I found the details of our local Citizens Advice Bureau and its opening times. I printed off details for the various options available – DMP, IVA, Bankruptcy, DRO, etc. Looking through these, I realised that a DMP or DRO may be the best action to take, and that there may actually be an escape from the hell we were going through. For the first time in years, I actually felt that I could get in full control of our debts and was looking forward to the future.

Anyway, Mr 3Dogs had been out all day helping a mate, so that evening, I told him what had been said on the phone and what I had found out online. I ran through all the options with him and he was pleased that there seemed to be answers available to us. I told him that it looked like we could apply for something called a Debt Relief Order and I explained what this entailed. We both studied the print-outs about DRO’s and other options thoroughly, and openly. I said that I would call the local CAB and make an appointment when it opened for queries in two days time. Mr 3Dogs went to bed and I continued to check for further details online.

The next day, when Mr 3Dogs was out again (he was helping a mate get his motor back on the road) I obtained online copies of our separate credit reports using free trials and getting cashback for this too!! After checking the reports, I decided that I could not wait any longer to sort this out, so I got all the necessary information together and rang CCCS straight away. When I say all of the information, I do mean ALL as I included the debts that I had ignored too, which had been shown on the credit reports. I explained our situation to them and, because I had all the information to hand, with exact figures, she was able to put me straight through to a Counsellor, who ran through my financial statement with me, adjusting it as necessary according to her guidelines. She advised a Debt Relief Order for me and Bankruptcy for Mr 3Dogs. He was not eligible for a DRO as he has a small pension pot from previously opting out of SERPS. However, our rent and council tax arrears would have to be included and I felt unwilling to do this, first of all because of the consequences of this with our tenancy if rent arrears were written off, but also because in my mind I needed to pay these debts. I had come to an arrangement with the Housing Association and the council in order to pay off these arrears, which would mean that we would be up to date on both rent and council tax within 6 or 7 months. The Counsellor therefore advised that, if I wanted to continue paying these off, I should write to all our other creditors explaining that I had taken advice from them and offering token £1 payments for 6 months until we were in a better position to pay more. At that time, I could go back to CCCS to see about a DRO but would have to bear in mind that without the extra payments to our priority debts, our available income after household expenses may then be over the £50 limit and a DRO might not then be suitable. At which point we would talk about a DMP instead, with CCCS managing our payments to our creditors.

I felt so elated when I came off the phone, I was almost light-headed. I felt in control again. When Mr 3Dogs came home later, I had paperwork all over the place. I explained it all to him and he agreed that we had to pay the rent and council tax arrears before going any further. And for the very first time, we discussed the problem properly and openly. I did not show him the full list of debts as I was still hiding some from him, but I did tell him the exact balances on the ones he knew about. Although he was surprised at some of the amounts, he understood why I had not talked about it before. He said that, as long as he had not known the full details, he had pretended that everything was under control already. But he was happy now, knowing that we had help in sorting it all out one way or another, to discuss it. He did not read all the information and told me that as long as I had read it and understood it, that was fine by him. I explained about DMP’s and DRO’s and what they entailed. The feeling of elation from talking to CCCS was still there, but magnified by the fact that we were now talking about it openly. I felt like a door had been opened and I could walk straight through. Like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. A great pressure had been released. I felt like I could take on the world ...... and win!

And so begins the part of this story when we do actually start to deal with our debts properly and secrets are no longer secret ................................................

....................... to be continued

So here we are - eight instalments in and more to come - I have typed some up on my computer but until I get online properly I can't copy and past them on

Never mind, an update on Mam - for those of you new to the thread, I cam up to Newcastle on Saturday 23rd October as my Mam had been taken into hospital on Tuesday the 19th October after a fall at home and vomitting with blood in it. It is now 2 weeks since she has been admitted and to date:

Torn flap of skin on shin of left leg when nurses getting her out of bed to use the commode

3 nurses needed for commode now (Mam is 6 1/2 stones in weight!!) so, as never 3 available, she was on bedpan until 26th when they fitted a catheter, which she does not understand

They gave her nothing to eat or drink from the Tuesday until the Thursday of first week as she failed the 'swallow test' and they only fitted a saline drip on the Friday after my sister asked why none was fitted

After another swallow test on Friday 22nd October, she was allowed 'soft food and thickened liquids' but they then moved her to a side room saying she had a bowel infection and put her back onto Nil By Mouth with saline drip

We kept telling them that she had no trouble eating and very little problem with fluids, but they said that they had to go by their tests so remained on NBM

We spoke to doctor on Thursday 28th October and agreed that they try a feed tube to give her some nourishment, which was fitted on the afternoon of Friday 29th October. However, it was pulled out either by her or in her moving at 11.30 pm that night and they have not managed to get one to stay in since - so, no food again

Meanwhile, we (my Sister, Brother and myself) have been feeding her yoghurt or mooler rice at each visit, on the quiet, and no ill-effects. In fact, carers gave her a bowl of custard on Saturday or Sunday by mistake, even though she was NBM (!!!!!) and she ate it all with no ill-effects

When I was there yesterday (Monday afternoon) the doctor spoke to me and explained that they could not use the tube to feed her and with our agreement and support, and in awareness of the danger of it getting onto her chest (which was the problem) they wanted to restart soft fods, so I said that was exactly what we had been praying for and had wanted all along

Last night, my sister gave her a pot of soup by spoon and I later fed her a greek yoghurt by spoon, both with no problems. Nurses said they had tried to give her a bit soup earlier and some rice, but she had not eaten much of it, saying rice wasn't sweet enough!!!

So we are now seeing positive action and can look forward to a more positive outcome. My neice is there this afternoon and I will take my sister down tonight, and we will see how it goes

Doctor said to plan for feeding her up and getting physio to get her fit to walk around, by end of this week or beginning of next week - I would look to be home middle of next week

Hopefully I can get online again - still having arguments with 3 about my dongle - they are still trying to get an exchange one out to me!!! I will try to get online as and when I can but in the meanwhile just to let you know that I can read my emails on my mobile but have trouble with this site on there. So if you email me or PM me, I can read those

MANY THANKS TO YOU ALL FOR ALL YOUR WORDS OF SUPPORT - I can't express just how much they help me :A :A :A