Injury brings pile of debt

Linda Holmes is battling financially after ACC won't cover all her medical costs. Photo / Rhys Palmer

When Linda Holmes broke her wrist a month ago she had no idea that she would end up on the brink of an economic breakdown.

But the 58-year-old Waikato dairy farmer's daughter, single and fiercely independent, says four weeks later she is facing a mountain of debt.

Linda, a relief teacher of economics, badly broke her wrist when she stepped through a rotten floorboard on her deck at home. And she is still not working.

But she has faced a plethora of costs. ACC is not covering all her medical costs and she has had to pay about 50 per cent of the x-ray, bone scan and two doctors' bills.

While she has been off work she has had to replace glasses worth $1200 and had to find $1600 for necessary dental work. And her medical debts are mounting.

At the same time she has been struggling with a spiralling cost of living.

"I'm used to having a good income," Linda says. "Relief teaching, which I've done for the past two years, was already a shaky income but now I can't work at all. I'm having to go to Social Welfare for the first time in my life.

"Back in 1976 I fractured my skull in a horse-riding accident and I didn't have to pay anything," she says. "But nowadays it's very different. I have medical bills mounting and have been thinking of selling my house. But I have two homestay students, and that's important to me.

"I have to plan ahead as I get older.