-Baseline: my husband was laid off in May 2008; we couldn't afford our mortgage so we sold the house and moved into an apartment in December 2010. My younger son has been living with us since he graduated high school; he was unable to find a job and started massage school.
-In May 2011 I had pneumonia and missed 2 weeks of work.
-The day I went back to work my husband got pneumonia.
-He developed fluid around his lung and had to go the hospital to have it drained.
-While he was in the hospital for the fluid draining, he was diagnosed with an abdominal abscess.
-They kept him in the hospital ready for emergency surgery for 6 days while trying to treat the abscess with IV antibiotics.
-That was mostly successful so they sent him home, with a catheter for more IV antibiotics at home.
-I had a very negative experience at work; I complained and they apologized, and said it wouldn't happen again.
-I had a cancer scare, ruled out by further tests.
-I had a different cancer scare, ruled out by further tests.
-My husband had a colonoscopy to figure out why he'd had an abscess (might have been cancer, but it wasn't) and scheduled a surgery to resect his bowel.
-I had a third cancer scare, followed by surgery.
-A week later my husband's surgery happened. He was supposed to be in the hospital for 2 days but it was 6 because of complications. This was Thanksgiving weekend of 2011.
-The day my husband got out of the hospital, a good friend of ours had a heart attack and had 8-hour open heart surgery. Turns out he also had a stroke because his aorta shredded. Note this friend already had total kidney failure. After I got my husband settled at home, I spent the rest of the day with our friend's wife waiting for the surgery to be over.
-January 2012 my older son's marriage broke up, and for a while we might have been taking the grandkids to raise (but that didn't happen--at least, not yet).
-My younger son was told by his dad that he needed him to drop out of school for a while (we later found out it was because his dad was paying the tuition and couldn't afford it).
-My friend got out of the hospital and needed a car to get to dialysis, so we loaned him our second car.
-My husband's father died; we traveled to rural southern Virginia for the funeral, which was 2 days before the anniversary of my mother's death.
-The bad thing that happened at my office the previous summer? It happened AGAIN. In almost exactly the same way. So much for their promise to make sure it didn't.
-My sister called me in tears because the man she sent to prison for hitting her, and then took back when he got out, beat her badly. She also started treatment for alcoholism. And she's losing her job because the business is going under because of the bad economy.
-My friend was in a car collision in our car.
At this point I'm ready to sell everything I own and just run away. So's my husband. I'm exhausted from all of it, and from all the minor stuff that's been happening alongside of this stuff. Plus there's other major stuff that is not my story to tell, but closely affects me.
I went on a retreat a couple of weeks ago to explore what to do with the rest of my life. I discovered I want some specific travel experiences, and found a role I'd like to play. I'm writing a book on planning a personal retreat. But today I'm too overwhelmed to think past today.
Please say something nice to me.
This entry was originally posted at http://snippy.dreamwidth.org/348805.htm