Hoping for a better year for all.

I'm a bit startled 2023 is already over. The early part of the year was all right, although I'm still adjusting to having my mom live with us, and I'm seriously lonely a lot of the time -- I found a nice therapist, but he was an older man who had spent 40 years working with vets at the local VA hospital, and he couldn't seem to get past his usual methods of breathing exercises and battling anxiety. I know how to calm my anxiety most of the time, it's more depression and loneliness and grief that have ganged up on me. After six or seven visits, I couldn't see making any progress with him.

But now the hard part is finding another therapist I click with and who takes my insurance. Yay?

Once the fall hit, everything piled on at once -- I had rotator cuff surgery, which is a really, really hard recovery, especially since it was my right shoulder (and I'm right-handed). I definitely was not prepared for that level of pain and discomfort, but it healed great, and physical therapy was/is good. I'm going to a new office right near me, and that led to interviewing for a new job -- front desk admin right there! My physical therapist and I hit if off right away, and he's all for it -- he gave them my name and his recommendation. I'm doing one last part of the interview (I think it's the last?) on the 12th.

I love the people I work with currently, but the volume and the hours and the corporate expectations have really soured me on staying there. The rehab clinic would be much more peaceful, and hopefully more money if Dan (and me -- I asked for a few dollars more an hour) gets his way. So that's exciting but also sad -- saying goodbye to my current coworkers is going to be tough.

And then December was just ... shitty. It's the busiest month at the optometrist where I work, because people suddenly realize they have to use their vision benefits or lose them. So I was working crazy hours right when my mother was diagnosed with Stage 2A melanoma, and had to take her into the city for appts and surgeries. And then there was Christmas to prepare for! We did have a nice one, though.

I'm just ... eternally tired. Health stuff sucks -- I have to better manage my diabetes, and I have to find a new therapist (or a friend, maybe?) as well as a neurologist. over the year, I've been fighting losing my balance several times a day, and in early November didn't manage to in time and wound up falling backwards and cracking my head on the cement sidewalk. That was a trip to the ER and four staples in my head.

I'm just hoping 2024 is more peaceful, and good to the people I love.

I am sad that so many of us had so much badness happen this past year. I hope that you all, like me, find that writing it all out and posting it makes it easier to put it all behind us and move on.

2023 was difficult for me, too.

In April my step-mother and half-brothers belatedly held a small memorial service for my father and buried his ashes in the same cemetery plot where his parents and younger brother are buried. The event was emotionally painful. The trip there and back was physically painful. Not a pleasant memory. In hindsight, I wish I had stayed home.

In May one of my cousins died in a car accident. It really shook me, which is odd because we weren't close -- we spent some summers together when we were kids, but the last time we saw each other or spoke together was twenty years ago. I think what got to me was that his was the first death in the family of *my* generation, and he was younger than me.

In June I quit my job. I have metastatic (stage IVb) prostate cancer, peripheral neuropathy, lymphedema, osteopenia, anemia, diabetes, high triglycerides, high blood pressure, and chronic kidney disease. Managing all that has been difficult, and the treatments have had problematic side effects. It got to where I couldn't keep up with the demands of my job. Frustration and depression grew too great. I gave up.

Continuing my healthcare coverage via the COBRA program involved an awkward transition process that took much longer than anticipated. I ended up having to reschedule several medical appointments, but I managed not to get dropped from my clinical trial.

The week after I quit, in an odd coincidence of timing, a Medicare card arrived in the mail. I was not expecting it at all. One of the privileges of my disability status ("You've got stage four prostate cancer? Automatic approval!") was early Medicare eligibility, but I thought I would have to explicitly apply for Medicare enrollment, and I hadn't done that yet. The card indicated that my Medicare Part A and Part B coverage was scheduled to begin on October 1st, 2023. I did a little research and then enrolled in a Medicare Part D plan and a Medicare Supplement (Plan G) policy, plus a vision plan and a dental plan -- all scheduled to start on October 1st as well.

Then in the middle of August I received notice that my disability status had been revoked -- retroactively. One major consequence was that my Medicare enrollment had suddenly become invalid. That threw a wrench into all the healthcare planning I had done. I was advised to submit an appeal, and did so, hoping to restore my Medicare eligibility. The USPS promptly lost that piece of certified mail. I made fresh copies of all the documents and hand-delivered them to the local Social Security office. Four months later (just a couple of weeks ago) I finally got a response (of sorts) to my appeal: a voicemail not actually saying "rejected," merely "Now that you are no longer employed, go ahead and re-apply for disability." I suppose a formal letter will turn up in the mail some day.

The other major consequence of the loss of disability status was that Social Security clawed back all the payments they had been sending me monthly for almost two years. That stung, but it wasn't disastrous -- I hadn't yet spent any of that money. I am still trying to find out just what documentation I will need about the claw-back so that I can amend my tax returns to reclaim the taxes I paid on that Social Security income in 2021 and 2022 -- otherwise I am out another couple thousand dollars.

At the end of August, JZ died. I had a lot of survivor's guilt about that, and it is taking a long time to subside.

In September I came down with Covid-19. I had never experienced rales before; that scary symptom was an unwelcome novelty. My oxygen saturation never dropped, and I never had trouble breathing, it was just noisy. Otherwise, it felt like I had a cold, and it was gone in two weeks. Thank you, vaccination program!

Early in October my quarterly bone scan reported a new lesion, on one of my ribs. It is the first sign of progression of my cancer in two years -- a scary little stumble down the slippery slope to the end.

I'd like to see the solar eclipse this April. I'd like to make it to my 60th birthday this June. Some days those seem like achievable goals. Other days, not so much. Staying positive takes effort.

When I finished my second set of chemotherapy infusions in early 2021 I doubted I would see 2022, let alone 2023. Yet now here we are, starting 2024. Every morning when I wake up I regard it as a bonus day.

I try to get the most out of each and every one.

I hope you will too.

dcp, I hope you have many, many positive days ahead.

2023 was kind of a crappy year for me and mine.

Mr.S’s behavior got to the point where we couldn’t handle it, so we ended up checking him into a residential treatment center in February. He was there until October, with weekend home visits. His behavior is better, but he’s still having tantrums. We did an intensive outpatient program recently.

In August I came home to find that the hose connecting the water supply to the first floor toilet had gotten disconnected and there was a lot of water on the first floor and the lower level. Our insurance company was contacted, and a water mitigation company set up. We moved into a suites hotel the next week. We’re still there. Things have taken a lot longer than we expected, and we’re all tired of being here.

On the upside, Gary and I are still fully employed, and our parents are doing fine.

In summary, we’re stressed, tired and cranky.

{{{Buffistas}}}

I'm unlikely to do any kind of year-end summation but I wanted to take a minute to thank those of you who do. I hope it's good for you to write it all out, but it's definitely good for me to have a big picture sort of thing of where y'all are and what you've been through, even if I have been getting pieces throughout the year as they happened. Love you all and wishing for good things.

So, toward the end of 2022 my father died.

At the beginning of 2023 I took mom on a once in a lifetime sort of trip and thank God I did.

Between COVID, moving during COVID, and the strike, the coffers are bare. Acting has been tabled for the foreseeable future. I have gotten a full time gig at a fancy pants law firm. This is exquisitely painful.

Mom was diagnosed with cancer and has come to live with me so she can be treated at a world class cancer center so I’m pretty grateful to have a good income, soul-selling notwithstanding.

Caring for mom has taken over me emotionally and I have become much less present in the lives of everyone - here and in meat space. My emotional padding has been worn away and other people’s pain shatters me. I cannot watch the news without weeping. Even lurking is usually too much to bear. I keep track of you all, however, via a little bird or two who give me the bullet points. You are all very much in my heart.

(FYI, I am ok. Therapy is twice a week and my family is working well together in caring for mom - I’m just flat out of emotional spoons.)

Oh, Trudy. That's all so hard. And I truly get what you mean about the erosion of emotional padding. I wish you and your mom whatever ease can be found in a difficult time.

What Pix said, Trudy. Spoons are thin on the ground these days. There doesn't seem to be a surplus.

I've...been on a sort of emotional sabbatical for the last few months: dealing with changing physical abilities and also mental and emotional engagement limits. It's been difficult, but necessary, since it insisted on happening whether I was willing to consciously participate or not. I seem to have made my peace with several things, and to be emerging from self-imposed quarrantine. I don't promise to be more involved, but I'ma give it a good try.

I love you all and this place and I miss you when I'm not here. Good things and an easier time for all of us--Forth, Eolingas!

I wish I could know what it's like to have a life where I'm not just holding on. Again.(Which, in my...population is something of a diamond-shoes complaint cause some of my generation's best minds don't have that, even, and they might deserve it even more than I do.) But here I still am, wondering what thriving might feel like and knowing I'll never really earn the saddest bit of praise, ever, which is the only one saved for female-identified disabled people: She Asks For So Little. I might have been born under that sign, but something in me said it would rather take its chances on the fuckin' boat.