Three weeks of my life are missing.
I don’t remember the ICU.
I don’t remember the ambulance ride.
I don’t remember most of the first weeks after my brain hemorrhage.
What I do remember is what came after.
One day, I realised something terrifying.
Our household income had almost disappeared.
Many people assume that if one partner gets sick, the other partner keeps working and the bills continue to get paid.
That wasn’t our reality.
My husband stopped working because I wasn’t ready to be left alone.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand what was happening around me.
I couldn’t drive.
I struggled with basic daily tasks.
I was confused, emotional, and often exhausted.
Leaving me alone for long periods simply wasn’t an option.
So while I was recovering, my husband stayed with me.
It wasn’t because he was lazy.
It wasn’t because he didn’t want to work.
It was because survival became our full-time job.
Suddenly, the income from two adults became almost nothing.
The mortgage didn’t care.
The electricity bill didn’t care.
The grocery store didn’t care.
Life continued sending invoices.
For the first time, I understood something that personal finance books rarely talk about.
The real risk isn’t losing your job.
The real risk is losing your ability to function.
When that happens, income can disappear much faster than most families expect.
Looking back, we survived because we had cash available.
Not investments.
Not home equity.
Not theoretical net worth.
Cash.
Cash bought us time.
And time gave me the chance to recover.
That lesson would completely change how I thought about money forever.
In the next part, I’ll explain why having investments wasn’t enough—and why cash became the most important asset in our household after my brain hemorrhage.
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