WACO, Texas (KWTX) – The federal government has been closed for business for nearly a month and federal employees across the nation are feeling the impact of not getting paid.
A Central Texas couple is feeling it more than most.
Jeremy and Jennifer Neagle have been married for 29 years and both work at the Waco Veterans Affairs Office. On July 27, Jeremy was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer.
“He’s very much the tough it out type so when he said that his back was hurting real bad and he felt like he couldn’t very well and his chest started hurting, he said well okay it’s time to go to the hospital,” Jennifer recalled.
That’s when they found out he had stage three synovial sarcoma, Jennifer explaining that sarcoma itself is already relatively rare.
“The synovial sarcoma that he has is even more rare, and the fact that it’s not in a bone but in his lung makes it even more rare,” she explained.
Now he’s living at a residential facility by the MD Anderson cancer center in Houston as he goes through chemotherapy.
According to Jennifer, “he expects to stay down there for 4 months”. Because of this, Jeremy is unable to work, and while Jennifer can she is a federal employee.
This means that with the government shutdown, which happened just days after Jeremy started his treatments, she is working without pay.
“This past Friday was the first time that I had not received a paycheck,” Jennifer shared, “my husband was receiving a paycheck for the rest of his PTO that he had saved up, but it was also the first paycheck where he had not received a paycheck.”
While she will get back pay once the shutdown is over, right now they have mounting medical bills and no income, leaving them frustrated and worried.
“You’re a federal employee, you know it’s a coveted position, you get all these really nice benefits, great pay… but then something like this happens and then we find ourselves with no paychecks,” she said.
If you’d like to help Jeremy and Jennifer you can reach out to Jennifer directly at 254-349-5252.
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