Goodbye 2017. You nasty hag.

My sister gifted me with a 300 writing prompts book, and it asked me to entitle the chapters of my life. I thought this would be an interesting topic to bring to the blog, because its likely I'll have this electronic record longer than the little blue book of depression, otherwise known as the writing prompt book.

One of the questions within the book instructed me to break up my life (up to this point) into 3 chapters, and give each one a title.

I've never been one to follow directions carefully, but what I ended up with was both hilarious and pathetic in all the same breath.

1973-1983
Hatched, Dad's on scheme in the Military, almost born in Germany

1984-1997
My Bipolar Mother: The Other Woman

1990-1997
Holy $#@! This kids really mine x 3.
Hatched 3 of my own in 1990, 1993, 1995.
Mom's Dead, Now What?
Raising my 13 year old brother

1998
Ascent into Hell

1999-Present
God saves me, but I'm an idiot.

2004-Present
I'm in love with an Atheist.

2009-2012
My Son committed an Armed Robbery, and is spending 2 years in Jail. I'm so ashamed.

2016-Present
WAIT?! WHAT? I'm a Mom again. (Grandma steps in to save the day.....and various other blathering)

2017-Present
The Second Ascent Into Hell


I got started on the Not Happy thread about some of the things I've faced these past few years. In writing it all down I had one of those epiphany moments, where I realized that I'm still sane when I probably have right to be approaching insanity. I've gone through a lot in the approximately 16060 days I've been alive. Yet, this past year and the one prior to it just seemed to be the years to keep on giving.

This year seen my husband and I nearly divorce, on account of my trying to remove my grandchildren from the foster care system. It seen us be grilled by every agency I think anyone trying to adopt a child would be, but in this scenario, I'm trying to remove my own flesh and blood from the clutches of what I can only describe as a nightmare. For all the good intentions the social workers have, for all the good intentions the care facilitators have, the fact remains the foster system is a broken system which needs to be overhauled in the worst way.

I spent my weekends travelling over 300km both ways to visit my grandchildren whom I hadn't seen in nearly 4 years. My eldest granddaughter was just a mere 3 when I had seen her last. She barely remembered me, but thankfully she did. My youngest, I had seen her once, a tiny little bundle wrapped like a burrito. These two scared little girls, living with complete strangers, instead of me, their paternal grandmother. My months were filled with visits from the various agencies, and a grilling and intense process which investigated even my sex life with my husband. They'd always say it was a very intrusive process, my version of intrusive and theirs were two different things. They couldn't have been more intrusive if they'd done a full glove anal inspection on the entire family. It was that brutal.

I won't even get into the battle fueled by racism. My granddaughters are first nations. I'm white. I think that should at least explain some things.

Then just as these things were wrapping up, literally a few weeks before the private guardianship order was signed, my husband had lost his long term, full time employment all because of the whim of some jerk he worked with. While he received a decent enough settlement, he shouldn't have lost his job in the first place, and wouldn't have if his manager wouldn't have had his head firmly shoved up his posterior. This caused our already stressed and strained marriage a further blow.

As if that weren't enough, the year that just kept on giving seen my sister frantically calling me to inform me that our Dad had been rushed to emergency with what we later discovered was a perforated bowel. I paced the hallways, and couldn't sit still until the nurse who had attended the surgery came to tell me that they'd found the hole, and Dad was out of surgery, but still recovering.

Meanwhile my cousin sends me a message to let me know an aunt had died. My own fires so many, I couldn't even begin to be there for them. I had hoped to attend the funeral, I had hoped to be there for them mentally, but in truth, I was treading water so badly that I couldn't even begin to throw them a life saving device, because I was too busy clinging to my own.

Then the real kicker, one morning Tuesday morning, I just woke up and I couldn't do what I used to do. I kept having chest pain, I kept feeling such a relentless fatigue and since my mother had died at the age of 42, I checked myself into the emergency department. Much the same as they had done for her, and much the same symptoms, nothing showed on her EKG, other than an elevated heart rate and blood pressure, nothing too high, but just abnormal for me. The crushing feeling in the chest, and the fatigue was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I checked myself out of the ER and then went to my doctor the very next day, since the hospitals where I live aren't very good at listening to the symptoms people have.

My doctor immediately sent me for blood work, immediately sent for more testing, but all details were inconclusive, yet the fatigue and the crushing feeling in between my rib cage and left scapula kept persisting. More MRI, more stress tests yielded a tumor in the chest, which seemed to be encroaching on the lung. Yet, this didn't explain still the crushing or the fatigue. A preliminary diagnosis of congestive heart failure was given. Something I had been suspecting for some time, given family hx, and the fact that my legs had swollen so much it looked like I no longer had knees. Yet, I didn't dare seek treatment for fear my granddaughters would be left hanging in the foster system. I supposed had I died, there would have been no choice, but it would be literally over my dead body that these girls who have already been through so much, would go there.

I've been hanging out at home now since the middle of October, trying in vain it seems to recover. Yet, my body allows me so very little in terms of actual days where I feel 'normal'. The fatigue is still there, and the chest pain is still there, albeit reduced thankfully now. My days have become my nights, and I find my world has been turned upside down in so many ways.

Yet, as much as I hate this, I am hopeful. I am hopeful that the nuclear medicine tests will possibly reveal what the true issue is with my heart. It could be as simple as the tumor sitting on a nerve, but I think that's too much to hope for, considering all the things that have gone on and how I feel. I will know after my surgery on January 23. I'm expecting it to hurt like a son of a gun, considering they're drilling through my chest wall, and all the muscles within. They're expecting a recovery time of at least a month, but knowing how slowly I've healed from other surgeries, I suspect it will be closer to two or three.

Now my battle starts with long term disability. I only wish I felt better. I love working, even though my work is incredibly stressful, we have a dynamic and fun team that I miss dearly.

These things though pale in comparison to my husbands uncle, who has received a death sentence. I just pray that his death doesn't coincide with my surgery, because I truly don't think my husband could handle that kind of worry all at once. I also wish we could have been there for him, but thankfully we had made the time to go in the summer, before any of us knew this storm was upon us.