As Ana Rangel’s glaucoma and eye surgeries led to severe nausea, extreme headaches and shooting pain throughout her body, her children, Juan Felipe, 6, and Elizabeth, 3, grew scared. “Are you OK, Mom?” Juan Felipe repeatedly asked as he saw his mother deal with pain that prevented her from eating, sleeping or standing.
Rangel, 32, who has visual impairment in one eye and recently had surgery on the other, would try to console her children, though she says she didn’t know whether she’d live through another day.
The Rangel family is part of the Austin American-Statesman’s Season for Caring campaign, which helps 12 featured families and hundreds of other families through local nonprofit agencies. The Rangel family was nominated by the Austin Children’s Shelter as part of the shelter’s Strong Start family support program for parents of children ages 5 and younger who are experiencing extraordinary stress.
Juan Felipe loves for his mom to read to him. “Mom, what does it say here?” he asked during a painful period in Rangel’s illness. As much as Rangel wanted to help her son read, she couldn’t see the letters. Straining her eyes would unleash so much pain that instead Rangel would ask Juan Felipe to spell out the word and she’d help him put words together.
One of Rangel’s Season for Caring wishes was to get a second opinion on her eyes. Dr. Russell Hayhurst of the Glaucoma Institute of Austin has agreed to examine Rangel in January to see what her needs are.
Rangel’s husband, Domingo Martinez, 40, works in Miami to help support his family, but the medical bills keep mounting, and the distance weighs on them. Juan Felipe and Elizabeth miss their family time.
Juan Felipe loves learning, and he rattles off answers to his teacher’s questions so fast that he often forgets to raise his hand. He’s fascinated by building things and can spend hours playing with Legos.
It’s Elizabeth who is the family princess, though. “What’s your favorite color?” Rangel asks. “Pink!” No one can keep up with her imagination. She sings, plays dress-up and re-creates Mass for her little friends.
Rangel dreams that someday her children will go to college, but she worries that the family’s growing debt will haunt them forever. Assistance with paying down the $25,000 in medical expenses, gift cards for grocery and clothing stores, a computer for the children and money for Martinez to get certified as a mechanic or electrician would help lift the family.
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