Stick?

[Vuk]

there is nothing, in my book, quite as deserving of respect, as a hard days work to feed the family.

we never had things quite as hard as you vuk but my sister has a degenerative muscle disease and just achieving a basic standard of living for her is quite expensive for my dad.

My early childhood was pretty hard on my family, because I have 5 siblings, and it is quite hard to support a family that size. When we started getting old enough to hold our own jobs and when my dad found better paying work things got a lot better for us. Not say that we ever became even "well off", things aren't bad.
Kudos to your dad. Is that anything that she can recover from?

EDIT: What does he do?