Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Life

10/13/07 Letter to me:
:: Um.. howdy


I don't mean to be forward or anything, but um.. where the
hell are you? You haven't posted anything in ages and
frankly, I thought you should know that I have noticed this
fact. Hope everything is fine with you and everything...

10/13/07 my reply:
Hi,
Thanks for noticing. I went to visit my brother & his wife and their twin girls last month and since then things have sort of spiraled out of control. I've been moving, an elderly lady (93 yrs old) that my family takes care of had a stroke and had to be hospitalized and moved into a care center, then my grandmother (that lives in Montana) was only given a few days to live, and my mother's cancer that we thought was in remission has spread to her lymph nodes so she had to start her 3rd round of chemo, I also ended up with a nasty flu type bug and a really bad bite from a brown recluse spider that was incredibly painful and caused a high fever, those things combined with the usual happenings of life (single mom of 2 boys etc..) have left me little time to catch my breath let alone sit down and do anything online. So the simple answer is no things really aren't fine in general but I'm still alive and kicking around and will be back as soon as things stabilize somewhat.

Hope all is well with you!
_______________________________________________________________________

So my reply was the short version. There were many other things going on at that time that I left out. For instance, both of my children were having major issues at school that involved me going to meetings at both schools pretty much everyday. Also, due to busing issues I was driving them to and from school everyday, which is a 1.5 hour drive, twice a day. (Now I only do it in the afternoons)

I did not move far, just across the street. But, I did most of it by myself and I did ALL of the packing and unpacking by myself. I was covered with bruises from head-to-toe. I mean this literally! (I have pictures if you want to see.) I also had a very painful broken toe. Which made carrying/lifting boxes that much more fun. With all of the other things going on it took weeks to get moved and I literally did not stop moving from 7:00am until midnight or later, every day. (I lost a lot of weight really fast though...lol)

My adult adopted sister with serious issues that had moved in with my parents went off the deep end (again) started drinking heavily and in general making a mess of her life. Stole enough from my parents that they kicked her out. She then tried to drink herself to death (the doctors said she was half a drink away from death...) and ended up in the hospital for an extended stay.

My whole extended family and all of their kids flew to Montana to spend time with my grandmother, spent 5 days, flew back to their respective homes, Tracy CA, Atlanta GA, Memphis TN, then 1 week later had to turn around and fly back for her funeral. Yes, my grandmother died. We were very, very close and I'm still in shock, even though it was not a surprise. I cannot talk about it very easily at all yet.

My mom had to delay re-starting her chemo treatments during this time and that was worrisome because the cancer had also returned to her lung as well as going to her lymph nodes. Mom caught pneumonia in Montana and has been really ill and bed-ridden since returning, she's only been able to take a couple of chemo treatments.

Also, I had my very first biopsy during this time. It came back negative, but it was still scary. The more I write the more I think of that happened! Drama and more drama with various family members. Not with me but with each other.

There is so much more that I could add in but I am going to stop now.