I’m going to do a bit of venting here. It IS my blog and if you can’t vent on your own blog, where the hell can you?? My life has become completely overwhelming and I need to vent. So, here goes…
So at the beginning of this year, our family was already struggling financially in a very big way. Since about last summer actually. The biggest financial struggle we’ve ever dealt with in our lives.
Add to that that my father, who has Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injury, and now dementia, has been getting worse and worse. He turned 76 in March. My mom, who turned 72 in February, takes care of him 24/7 and is more than overwhelmed. I help her as much as I can, which is a lot. I don’t mind. I was raised “family helps family.” It’s what we do, of course.
Oh, I should mention that we live in the same town as both my parents and my husband’s parents. People always ask me that. Yes, I am physically helping since they are right here.
So of course, my mom’s health has been showing signs of wear. She is a cancer survivor (3 times!) and has multiple heart issues, including having also dealt with triple bypass surgery only a few years back. She has a lot going on but her body just keeps on fighting. She’s a FIGHTER.
AND in our family, there is also my husband’s mom that has a whole different list of health concerns that we are constantly concerned with (along with my husband’s other siblings) and often come into play on any given week. And the fact that she lives alone and has caregivers that alternate care of her. Just a whole lot on our plates to be taking up not just our time but our energy in our brains, stressing over. Since we love all these people so very much.
I will make a side note here that my mother-in-law is now, as of like 10 days ago, being cared for by her daughter and we are very GRATEFUL and happy to no longer have to worry about her as my sister-in-law has that handled and it’s a HUGE RELIEF to know she is in good hands! But for quite some time, this was a big source of stress as well…
SO…long before COVID-19 was even something any of us had ever heard of…my family’s life was already complete and utter CHAOS and STRESS. Like, so much so that I had been in survival mode for so many months I didn’t know how to just live anymore. I’m just taking life day to day these days, and I am EXHAUSTED.
AND THEN…ENTER THE CORONAVIRUS…
Seriously???? Noooooo, I mean SERIOUSLY???? Didn’t life throw us enough to handle already right now??? I mean REALLY????
And now’s when it gets REALLY interesting…
Because we had JUST finally figured out a solution to a lot of the stuff with my parents and found them an assisted living place and were very excitedly setting them up to live there…put their condo on the market to sell and started boxing stuff up to give away or sell…WHEN COVID HIT.
SO…Let’s just throw a couple more things in there, shall we????
About a month before all this poop hit the fan, my mom’s retina started to detach. Went in, had surgery to correct. Great, cool, done. 2 weeks later…uh, NOPE. NOT FIXED. Still a hole in there…go in and do a second surgery…
Ok great, NOW it’s fixed, right? All done? NOPE. A few weeks later (which was last week), find out she needs a THIRD eye surgery because that damned thing is detaching again!!!
Now they get really aggressive and put a buckle around the thing. And warned her this was going to hurt more in recovery. AND MAN DID IT. Spent the next couple of days helping her through the “worst pain in her life.” And that’s saying a lot for a woman that has endured a mastectomy and a triple bypass! Not to mention childbirth, twice! Emergency treatments to relieve PAINFUL pressure that was building up…yadda yadda…complications from the procedure that we are still dealing with…
AND, issue #2 to throw in there…my mom had to go in for an important scheduled angiogram (something that was scheduled because of her doctor’s concern… and has been another huge source of stress because if they didn’t like what they saw they were immediately putting a stint in). While still healing from this third horrific eye surgery. With the possibility of having to get a stint put in her heart.
THANKFULLY, turns out they didn’t need to put any stints in, so YAY FOR FINALLY SOME GOOD NEWS!!
But alllllll this stuff is going down while we are also dealing with my dad’s dementia getting worse than ever (not surprising with all the stress we’re all under), and all the craziness of this pandemic.
So yeah. I got a lot going on.
I’ve been staying with my parents, helping care for them both since last week when Mom came out of the last eye surgery…looks like I am here for longer while she recovers from this angiogram (not an easy recovery, apparently), AND it is taking longer than expected to recover from this last eye surgery. She is not yet capable of being responsible for my dad again yet.
And THEN we can start talking again about moving them into that assisted living home…where they will have to be quarantined the first 2 weeks they live there, but it will finally be a good place for them to be to get my mom help with my dad….if we can just get her health to the point where she can handle that.
And what about homeschooling???
What’s going on with that during all this??
Well, I think this should be called “Crisis Schooling” at this point. And I believe this is what we are ALL doing right now, isn’t it??
I’ve not even been home for a while…but I am hearing that my son is still getting his math done daily, as requested. And that’s all I currently have assigned to him. It’s all I can handle right now. My daughter is already done with school (she’s 19), so there’s nothing to deal with there. This is her first year out, actually…and we meant to get things going gung-ho on her business but…life had other things in mind…
And I’ve already decided that we are adding an extra year to my son’s high school years due to how truly dreadful this school year has been with all the drama in our family. So there’s still time to do the things I want to do with him. That actually comforts me greatly to know there’s still another 4 years to make up for this dreadful school year. And since he WAS going to be 17 when graduating, he’ll still only be 18…which is how old my daughter was, so that works. He has nothing else planned to run off to currently at this point anyway. If things change, we’ll reassess.
SO BASICALLY…Life is CRAZY PANTS HARD. And I miss my family! This morning we Facetimed so we could feel like we had some time together. Even woke my son up! Hehe!
But we will make it through this. That’s the only thing I know through all of this. We WILL make it through all this and be stronger from all this hardship. That I know for sure.
It’s insane to think that my life is so nuts right now that I am YEARNING for the time that all these other things can be resolved so we can JUST deal with the pandemic!! That seems like a breeze to me right now. At least for me personally, not for the world, of course.
Anyway, I have big plans for things to try to help both the distance learners thrust into this at-home learning lifestyle and our family that is in dire financial straits. We shall see how it goes.
If you actually read all the way through my vent, thank you. I appreciate your time and sympathetic ear (eye). I feel better after getting it all out.
Now I’m off to work more on my products! BIG PLANS!
I’d love to know how you are doing in these extremely trying times. Leave me a comment below and let me know!