My little patient has an ear infection so today I had her in my arms almost all of the 10 hours I worked. I suctioned a lot, managed her feeds and did my two hour vitals checks but a whole lot of today was just reading books out loud; singing folk songs, Sesame Street tunes and a couple lullabies; and playing with puppets.  I have a pretty awesome job!

On the homefront I came through the door to a bouncy Yeager, that was a better surprise than if I had recieved my insurance check, which I didn’t, but he had a normal poop, licked his bowl clean and could barely stand still to get his leash attached. I have never been so happy to have my arm yanked from its socket as tonight with him bounding and pullling.  He has been too sick to chase a bird for weeks now, tonight he made up for it and I think tomorrow the dog park is in order for sure!

I have had a great if tough week.

I keep typing and erasing, typing and erasing, but the gist of it is that even as I face the overwhelming debt and physical fatigue, I know it will all turn out OK. Yes that will be easier since I do still have a roof over my head, but nothing truly important can be taken away from  me by poverty. I am a lucky and loved lady.

P.S. Feel free to comment here on my blog, feel free to share, and feel free to help; I hope I can inspire others the way many, Cancer Girl to name one, have inspired me. (Not that I have said anything of worth yet) and please let me know if you have any trouble with the “Donate” button, thank you for helping me to get my ends to consider residing in the same city at least, maybe by 2015 with no further major medical setbacks, I can actually get them to meet.

Although when it comes to dealing with life altering illnesses, maybe you should also build an ark. The thing about life altering illnesses in books and movies, is the heroine either dies or gets better. Cancer, AIDS, Mental Illnesses, rare immune disorders and even PTSD are all resolved as an inspiring victory or an inspiring tragedy.

Real life is more like a serial comedy that runs forever until cancelled, and just when you think you won’t ever sing that same old tune again, it goes into serialized reruns.

I think it would be easier for all the people that care about me if I was a movie instead of a sitcom, for the record, I think it might be easier for me, too.

I was hoping for some more miracle in the mail today in the form of my insurance settlement, but instead it was just more bills.

I tried wiggling my nose like Samantha, and all that happened was a really big kiss from my dog.

In the meantime a friend of mine is about to have a biopsy done, possibly facing a similar journey soon, hopefully her story arc will be a short story or Lifetime feel good victory; but even if it isn’t, she will not walk alone.

Yesterday I dreamed the impossible dream, that somehow I would be spared the indignity of eviction, so I just kept on keeping on, being the best me I could and trying to figure out a good place for my dog buddies, then the impossible happened.

The Biggest miracle of today is how many messages of love I have received from unexpected sources, believe me when I say how much it helps to feel the love pouring in through these messages.

I am also humbled by two donations and a loan. Especially since those couple who helped me today have significant responsibilities of their own they are dealing with, thank you, thank you, thank you!

I am overwhelmed by the love.  And for those following, my puppies and I are spared eviction this month and I am also at the end of the largest copays and (hopefully) close to actually receiving the insurance check from the December accident, so things will continue to improve. And NicNac I now promise NOT to set my purse on the ground anymore.  Superstition or not, it can’t hurt!

Today I have another impossible Dream…..

My Impossible Dream is to meet all my financial obligations, give back in kind with interest once I am back in the black, and oh yeah get healthy enough to complete another Sprint Triathlon in 2014.

What do you dream of……

Yesterday’s frightening thing was posting on this blog that I need help, today’s frightening thing was leaving it up here. The irony is I don’t think anyone has even read it. And actually that can’t count as today’s facing a fear but with an hour travel each way and twelve hours with my patient and eight hours sleep, work doesn’t leave much time to broaden my personal horizons.

So, I integrated my daily challenge into my favorite thing, taking care of my patient.  During some tests she had this morning at Phoenix Children’s Hospital I risked feeling stupid and looking foolish and asked questions about what we were seeing. The Outcome is, I am much better informed.  At first the specialist was snooty. However, I think it was when she realized I wasn’t questioning her judgement, but clarifying the mother’s and I’s understanding, suddenly she warmed up to the situation and I have a handle not just on the new regimen but also on the paradigm on which it is based.

I do love my job!

So lots of changes at work but no headway on the homefront really.

All I need in the next 24 hours is a HUGE miracle.

The odds of that occurring are slim…….

so where do I go from here.

So very much to write about, some of it exciting and new; some of it just the same struggles on a new day. I am remarkably calm and peaceful today, especially since I am 685$ and 48 hours away from homelessness and about that much overdrawn.  I am breathing in slowly, then out again, off and on as the shenpa of fear (more fear of others reactions and what will I do about my dogs) or shame (in order to feel safe themselves people are more than happy to point out how I could have prevented this, if I am to blame, they need not feel guilty or at risk; and I am kind of a control freak so I keep trying to blame myself too, because then I could guarantee it would never happen again) comes rolling back in to claim me.

There are choices I should have made sooner, and two or three bouts of irresponsibilty (not even $300 worth total) where I just wanted to medicate the situation with books. How I got here only matters if I can change things, and I have changed everything I can. I am grateful that today I have a roof, some food and significantly less pain and nausea thanks to getting seeded last night before coming home, an amazing type of acupressure.

My weekend was full of pleasant surprises. Friday night met I some new authors, found a fabulous place to eat next time I am flush, and did my daily good deed as well as a full 10 hour shift with the singularly most adorable little patient in the world. The gentleman I walked all over downtown Mesa with needs to learn pathetic is not the best door into a ladies heart or pants (and DEFINITELY NOT this ones), but he was having a very bad day and it was his birthday weekend, and hopefully the company improved it. Although I think the fact I made it clear I was absolutely not interested in a hook-up will probably limit any future one on one, I look forward to being his friend as part of this new Geek FB group I joined.

Saturday I was the back-up plan for a gentleman whose date I assume canceled because he had an extra ticket at the last minute. He is handsome, charming and intelligent and kind,  so probably won’t actually ask me out as a first choice, but I don’t care. I would gladly go on a real date with him, but even if I get to watch him find a better choice on the meetup site,  I think he may have his eye on a someone, I have no regrets or hard feelings.  That is the perfect kind of date or non-date, where the fun and company is the point. The night was an 11 on a 1-10 scale. Saw Carpenter’s “Thing” for the first time. Yes I screamed, and if he has any feeling left in his left arm and hand I will be surprised. LOL

Physically,  the thing in my tongue is much, much smaller. I am coughing only rarely and so excited to actually get to return to training again this month. Slowly, slowly……today is my release to activity as tolerated after the car accident. Six months can be such a long time. I immediately started planning my runs and swims and bikes in my head, I swear my PT heard the wheels turning. “One activity at a time should be added, and go slowly or you will make everything worse again” Booooo! Except Yeah! that means if I use some discipline and reason, I can be ready for Sprint events the end of 2014, and maybe a full one by the end of 2015.

I am taking the suggestion of others who have dealt with crippling medical debt and am trying to add a donate button to my Blog, starting an Etsy store for my crafts, called the insurance company twice already today, am picking up another patient offered to me, am spending much less on gas by always combining trips, not going out much, etc; sticking to my bare bones budget; so there really isn’t more I can do today to change things.

Do I wish things were different, yes, I do. I wish money would magically appear in my Desert Schools Account, I wish I would go an entire week without physical pain, or the flashes of panic and misinformation that pain and my PTSD trigger, I wish I was healthy and beautiful and rich and could not only pay my own bills but help so many other friends and strangers who are struggling. I wish I was in love and safely in a long term commiteed relationship so I didn’t have to feel like just letting someone in was doing them a disfavor. Wishing and hoping, though, are no more helpful than blame, anger or self pity. Today I choose to be grateful. I am grateful to be alive, and to have a place to live; to have my life full of wonderful friends, both those I know and have built history with and those not yet met; I am so lucky and so grateful and I know it ill all turn out right in the end, because if it’s not right, it’s not the end. Today, I am not in charge of the movie, just my own actions.

Hopefully the handful of people who actually read my blog realize yesterday was a joking riff on “The Jerk”. I can’t get that scene out of my head. What was funny then, has sudden meaning as I plod through the mud of this life cycle. I really am short of time, and truly in need of a mere 1500-2000$ to keep roof over my head and rubber on the road, what with medical co-pays, the move and a few shorter than expected weeks due to medical tests, a birth, etc.

But that is not what I was riffing on, it was the fact that in “the moment” – when I was waiting to hear if the new hemo-dyscrasia and growths were cancer, when Dawn and Archer’s lives were in danger, even as the sale of the San Tan house teetered (before again falling through)- each time I talked and meditated so fiercely thinking this, just this is what I need- to live long enough to graduate my current patient, to see Dawn watch Archer take his first steps, to be in a new home without alienating my son and wife- just this.

And then another challenge would present itself and I would say and this…..

I am aghast at my own neediness.

and a little amused.

Yup, universe all I need is this paddle game……

All I need….

4 more hours in a day

that’s all I need. I don’t need anybody or any of this except 4 more hours in a day

and 1500.

I need $1500 to magically appear in my Desert Schools bank account, 4 more hours in a day and that is it,

I don’t need anythin else….

and this lamp…

Spring officially arrived last week, I feel peacefully energized and again ever so slightly hopeful in between periods of paralyzing portents of doom.

This was my autumn mode in the cooler climes where winter meant cozying up inside my abode and baking, cleaning, reading and maybe mastering the latest game, be it actual or digital. It also meant “Holidays”, financial fluctuations, and coping with increased joint pain, and sun deficient depression. Spring was always a new beginning.

Now I live in Arizona, where life begins as earths hibernation begins. Winter draws us out of our domestic shells and into fervent nature worship. From the first night of autumn in which we are able to sleep with the windows even slightly open, to the first triple digit day, we sing our bodies electric and worship at the altars of Bragi, Nanna and Baldr.

Spring, in Arizona, is not Oestre’s promise of tomorrow’s play and plenty but the harbinger of Hel’s return, for  Hel spends summer with brother Loki burning our world both in flame and fever. My utility bills in the “old house” would triple over a thirty day period as fans and air-conditioning became life-saving necessities, one of the largest hardships of the Arizona summers is the cost of utilities.

I have no idea what my utilities will be this summer as I awoke for the first time in a new apartment this morning. Still in the process of moving, also a challenge for me (seriously challenged to the 11th power, I am “on the spectrum”, have serious PTSD issues around moving from early life periods of abandonment and homelessness, and have allowed myself again to become weak, stiff and overweight, and am barely living paycheck to paycheck).

My life travels in 7 year cycles and this past 7 has been in so many ways my own Ragnarock. Everyone gets their panties in such a twist when anyone talks about the end of the world, all panic and debate and prevention. Literature and predictions focus on the loss and disaster, yet every pantheon’s mythology of destruction ends with a rebirth. The end is never the end.

Our mythologists also seriously underwrite the renewal as well. Butterflies struggling from chrysalii and helplessly drying their wings have a lot in common with two humans emerging spared at the end from all the flame and flooding of Ragnarock to restart human history, or with my own renewal after periods of heavy loss and change.

I still have things to pack and clean, and of course I have to unpack and organize, and somewhere in there I need to pay my bills, nurture and heal my patient’s, complete my school work, play with my dogs, build and nurture new friendships while maintaining the ones that survived the latest rounds of upheaval. Oh, and laugh, it is very important in every period whether Ragnarock or Renewal, to laugh.

Well, because shit happens. If our minds and souls are being fed well, just as it does when our bodies are well fed, shit happens.

In fact as a nurse I can tell you if shit isn’t happening, then you (or me, or anyone) is in really serious trouble.

Namaste, now go laugh a bit and then practice some discipline and git her done!