TIFTON — When she found out her husband Nathaniel, the breadwinner for the family, needed to have hip replacement surgery on both hips, Heather Curry decided she wanted to do whatever she could to help.

She describes her husband as someone who would rather deal with his pain than put someone out.

The Currys used to live in Missouri, where Nathaniel was an over the road truck driver for five years and made personal sacrifices to get that job, Heather said. He used to experience back pain while he was driving, but that he was determined to provide for his family. When they lost their home last year, they decided to move to Omega with her mother.

“Nobody really wanted to do that, but we did it anyway,” she said. “We pretty much just left everything behind and came down here.”

Nathaniel got another job driving trucks around the area and finally went to the doctor about his back pain.

“He went to the doctor in Omega and she thought it was spondylosis,” she said, referring to a degenerative condition in the spine. “So we went to Affinity and saw the back doctor and he said it was his hips. He don’t have any cartilage in between his bones. He don’t have no cushion on either side. This man was on the road picking up 300, 400 pound tarps with nothing in between except bone on bone.”

Heather said that while the doctor couldn’t tell them what caused the deterioration of the cartilage, he did tell them that both hips will need to be replaced and that Nathaniel will be off his feet for at least six weeks per hip.

Heather said she works at the moment but that once he has surgery she’ll be unable to work since she will be taking care of him.

“That’s the reason we posted the GoFundMe,” she said. “We live with my mom but we still have bills. We still have to be able to take care of ourselves and he is our main income.”

Heather started a GoFundMe to try and get help with everything from paying medical bills to keeping the lights on.

“He don’t like to have help,” she said. “But he said, ‘Well, I guess you need to start that there GoFundMe you were talking about.’”

She said that she worries he will put off his surgery in order to keep working.

“He don’t want us to lose nothing else,” she said. “We just lost so much he don’t want us to keep losing because of him.”

The GoFundMe is https://www.gofundme.com/f/w7pe5-medical-help

Heather can be reached at 229-391-1556.