Sometimes Enough Still Isn’t Enough

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In 2011, Gomez experienced a health crisis. I’m not using hyperbole; he was an extremely sick man, and now he has what I teasingly call “the million-dollar pancreas.” At that time, I was working as an accountant for a regional coal business. Gomez was teaching. Elroy was a toddler. We were living two hours away from anyone who could help us out with childcare. I was working 10-12 hour days and sometimes working out of town for a week at a time because our company was in the midst of being acquired by Mean Green. For two solid weeks, I worked in the office and came home to help care for Elroy while I watched Gomez as he lost 30 pounds and turned a sick shade of deep yellow.

Thankfully, we were encouraged by The Best Healthcare Provider in the Entire World to drive to Charlottesville to seek answers at UVA. We drove Elroy across the mountain and dropped him off with my mom, unsure of when we would be returning to get him. I drove through the night as Gomez snoozed in the passenger seat (something a well Gomez would never do). I was worn out, worried about Gomez, and stretched so thinly that felt like I would shatter if someone looked at me wrong.

But I didn’t have to worry about how we would pay for Gomez’s medical care or our travel expenses. He had health insurance through his employer, and he also had secondary coverage through the plan that my employer offered. At that time, I earned the bigger salary, so we lived comfortably. We were six years into paying the mortgage on our house, so we had started making a bit of a dent in the principal balance. And let me be clear, even if I had been worried about how we would pay for his care, I would still have taken him to UVA. There is no amount of money that I wouldn’t have paid or debt I wouldn’t have gone into to have a healthy Gomez.

Now, the roles are reversed. I’m the one scaring Gomez with my health problems, and he is the one taking care of me. But somehow, our situation now is more tenuous than it was eight years ago. Now, we are one month into paying off a new mortgage on a new-to-us (but definitely not extravagant) home. Now, we are less than seven years away from Elroy going to college (if that’s the path he chooses). Now, we are paying off student loans for a second Master’s degree, in addition to two Bachelor’s degrees and a first Master’s. And we’re doing it all with much less cash flow coming in, since I left my accounting career for one in education, and we both took significant pay cuts to return to the Coalfields. So when I woke up in the (newly minted, healthcare-vacuum creating Ballad Health) hospital a couple of weeks ago, not only was I scared about my health and crying to see Elroy, but I was also worried about the bills that my special brain were racking up. Gomez would never admit it, but I know he was worried, too, because he’s much more fiscally-conscious than I am.

Following my seizure in February, I made Gomez promise to never call an ambulance again after I saw the bill for the ride to the ER. He didn’t have a choice this time, because I was in worse shape than I was last time. When I saw the neurologist last week, Gomez and I had to ask her for an alternative to the anti-epileptic medication she suggested I try, because the one she mentioned doesn’t offer a cheaper, generic option. People in the United States are making choices about their health based on what they can afford and not based on what’s best for them – and that only applies to the people who are fortunate enough to have access to healthcare in the first place.

Gomez stays working at least two jobs, on top of taking care of me and Elroy. There was a time last year when I had two part-time jobs in addition to my teaching job. I had to back off from the part-time work, though, because it turns out that waking up at 3AM on weekdays and pulling all-nighters on the weekend to teach English online to students on the other side of the globe can drastically lower one’s seizure threshold – and there are only a handful of part-time work options open to someone who lives in this area, consistently works around 60 hours a week at her full-time gig, and can’t drive. We each have a Bachelor’s degree, piles of additional continuing education training, and Gomez has not one, but two, Master’s degrees. We drive older cars. We live in a 54-year-old home that’s value is less than half of the national average. We only have one child. We’ve taken exactly one vacation in the past seven years.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be having such a tough time or that we deserve more than others because we are college-educated. I’m complaining because no human being should have to worry about how much it’s going to cost to stay alive. I’m complaining because no one should have to choose between a gallon of milk and a day’s worth of medication. I’m complaining because the years I spent studying business and accounting coupled with the time I worked as an accountant for a regional healthcare corporation allow me to see how dangerous the current iteration of our nation’s “healthcare” system is. I’m complaining because, while we might be able to figure out a way for me to afford to live, there are tens of millions of people in our country who can’t even afford to die because they make less money than Gomez and I do and live in areas where everything – from housing to groceries – costs more than it does here. I’m angry because the very people who created this gross, profit-driven, “bootstrap” mindset of American life are the same people who destroyed an entire middle class and made it impossible for anyone who makes less than a six-figure annual salary to make it under even the most modest lifestyle – AND they’re revered as pillars of the nation and oracles of business acumen. They’re creating policies that affect us all, and they aren’t even qualified to do so (I’m looking at you, Betsy DeVos). I’m thankful for all of the love and support that our community has given us over the past few weeks, and I’m thankful that what we are going through isn’t worse, but I’m angry because we are surrounded by people whose situations are worse, and it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m angry because our generation was sold a bill of goods that is rotten. Getting an education, being honest, and working hard are not enough to create a better life anymore; those virtues are only enough to barely eek by, if you’re lucky.

Beyond the Native Capacity

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This past spring, I cried in front of a co-worker. This was a huge deal to me because I never cry. I hadn’t really cried in years. At the time, I told my (probably freaked out) colleague that I felt like a glass of water that someone kept adding drops to, and that I guess the state testing we were knee-deep in the middle of was the drop that caused my glass to overflow. 

Have you ever felt like this?
So, of course I wanted the official name for whatever this is called. A quick Google of “what’s it called when water extends above the rim of a glass?” led me to this explanation, where the author describes the physics behind filling a glass “beyond the native capacity.” Now, I’m not a physicist, but I do love language and I thought I had reached a point “beyond the native capacity” of my ability to handle life last April.
Then, I told life to hold my (overflowing) beer and Gomez and I bought and spruced up a house. Then, we started a new school year. And I made it not even three weeks into the new school year before my brain lit up like a Christmas tree, and life since has been a stew of foggy (at best) memories and doctor’s appointments.
My latest brain short-out has really turned my feelings up to 11. I’m all tears and emotions now. A few days ago, I cried because we don’t live near a Target anymore. Last night, I cried when I realized that Gomez had put my favorite blanket on our bed when he changed out the linens earlier in the day. It’s messy and quite uncomfortable for anyone who happens to witness my now-frequent “spells,” as Granny would call them.
So, guess what I did today, when the neurologist officially diagnosed me with epilepsy?
I cried. And I realized that I am, right now, officially beyond the native capacity.
It’s a lot to process. It’s one of those moments when time divides itself into “before” and “after.” Before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, Gomez could count on me to help with the errands and Elroy-running; after, I’m not allowed to drive for at least six months. Before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I relished in the solitude of a quiet house while the boys went camping or fishing or to a ball game; after, I’m scared to be home alone. Before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I craved the rural obscurity of our new hometown so much that we moved back here; after, I wonder if moving two hours away from a semi-decent hospital wasn’t the worst decision we’ve ever made.
Life for me is scary right now, and all I can do is try to stay calm and wait for the glass to stop overflowing.

A(n) (Un)Burdened Mind

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I had a doozy planned for my next post. It would’ve probably evolved into a series of sorts, full of observations from my time as an accountant in the coal mining industry, musings on the healthcare vacuum in our area, and my best attempts at squaring my feelings about the larger forces I see at work behind the scenes.

Then my brain exploded, and I’ve spent the past four days losing the trash can in my kitchen (that’s not some cutesy euphemism – I literally cannot remember where the garbage can sits).

I’m not sure which is more terrifying – waking up on the floor, surrounded by paramedics telling me I’ve had a seizure (which is how my last two “episodes” played out) or knowing that it was going to happen before it did. Both situations are equally terrifying in their own ways.

I think back to when Elroy was born as the first time I ever felt like my body had let me down. I did not handle that revelation well at all. His premature arrival kicked off two solid years of postpartum depression that left me on shaky ground with my then-employer and afraid to be alone with my own child.

And I feel the sadness creeping back in around the edges. I’m a control freak, so knowing that something can sneak up from nowhere, sock me in the hospital for three days, erase a ton of my recent memories (while not erasing any of the recently-recovered trauma memories – thanks for that, brain), take my driver’s license, and completely change my life makes me feel helpless on a level that I can’t do justice with words.

But this time, I also feel warmth and love from my community and my neighbors. I feel the fight that that I used to finally break through the thickness of  the sedatives that kept me out for 36 hours because all I wanted to do was talk to my boy. I feel a sense of commitment to my family and my students. I’m not afraid of the potential weight gain or rage that I might experience while my doctors and I try to figure out the meds that will work best for me. I’ve finally tamped my vanity down enough to embrace the C-PAP that will be taking up residence on my nightstand really soon.

Because the truth is, I will do and accept all that and more if it means I get to spend more time with Gomez and Elroy.

I met my own mortality this week. It really scared me. And it made me really thankful, too.

My Wake-up Call

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The alarm clock has always been a point of contention between Gomez and me. He is a light sleeper, whereas if I hit the Snooze button fewer than three times each morning, I feel like I’ve neglected part of my morning routine. Early on in our marriage, Gomez made me move our alarm clock across the room from our bed to force me to get up and turn it off. He hoped that I would use my rationale to decide to just turn the alarm off and start my day since I was up anyway. He ended up having to hear the alarm and then deal with me getting out of bed and back in, then repeat the cycle every eight or nine minutes.

We haven’t owned an alarm clock in years. Thankfully, the smartphone era ushered in a whole new world for Gomez and me – a world where my alarm clock (slash Web browser slash Kindle slash calculator slash Walkman) is usually in the bed with me when I fall asleep at night. Normally, this works out fine. I try not to spend more than half an hour hitting the Snooze button each morning, and almost two decades of togetherness have dulled Gomez’s sensitivity to my wake-up routine.

But not this morning.

Gomez and I both work in the same profession. I won’t say directly what we do for a living, but I will say it’s one of the four careers mentioned in Randy Travis’s “Three Wooden Crosses,” — that really harsh song about a bus crash and salvation. IMO it’s probably my least favorite song of ol’ Randy’s, but I digress. We aren’t farmers, preachers, or hookers. We’re the fourth option. And it’s our first full week back at work, which means that I am operating at an energy level somewhere between exhausted and corpse.

When my alarm went off at 5:00 this morning, I successfully stole nine more minute’s sleep via the Snooze button. at 5:09, I had already slipped back into a phase of sleep that only Ambien can make happen, so when my alarm sounded again, I tried, and did not succeed, to Snooze again.

iPhone users, did you know that if you click the lock button on our phone rapidly, your phone will do you a solid and call 9-1-1? It totally will, but before your phone actually places a literal call for help, it will warn you it’s about to do so with a siren that I’m pretty sure sounds exactly like one at a bio-lab that alerts people there when someone attempts to steal some black death from a top-security area.

By this time, I had slept four and a half hours plus nine minutes. If you think the biohazard siren was enough to immediately wake me up, you’d be wrong. I must have slept through the first few seconds of it, but I thought I stopped the process in enough time to avoid activating Life Alert status, so I fell back asleep again.

Thought.

I was wrong.

A couple of minutes later, my phone rang. I was so relieved when I thought that I had stopped my phone from calling 9-1-1 that I had fallen asleep AGAIN (or maybe I’d never really woken up). Whatever.  I groggily answered the phone.

It was my friendly, local emergency services dispatcher asking me if I needed police, fire, or ambulance. I wanted to sound perky and apologetic, but I actually sounded nearly comatose. Even though the haze of exhaustion and sleep deprivation, I heard the incredulity in his voice when I told him I wasn’t having an emergency. I finally snapped fully awake when the very nice gentleman on the phone asked me for my age. Did I sound like a mamaw? Did I sound like a kid? Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that I sounded a mess. Then, he asked if I was sure that I didn’t need police, fire, or ambulance. Buddy, the only thing I need is more sleep. I didn’t tell him that, though. I told him that I was trying to silence my alarm and hit the wrong button one too many times. He was finally convinced enough to hang up.

Then, before reason fully set in, I decided it was time to get up and take the dog outside. Before dawn. With a flashlight. I finally woke up fully sometime around the end of our first lap around the yard.

So, I’m still wallering in gratitude. Today, I’m thankful that the dispatcher on the other end of the phone did not send someone to investigate the goings-on here, If he had, I would have surely gotten tackled in the yard.

Overwhelmed and Wallering

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I have cried more in the past week than I have in the past decade and a half.

We spent a solid month tearing down wallpaper, scrubbing and sanding walls/trim/baseboards/door and window facings, tearing out carpet, painting (and painting and more painting), hauling boxes, and dealing with several expected-but-still-unexpected hiccups that come along with buying a house that was vacant for at least a year.  The work was exhausting. The “discoveries” were sometimes exciting and sometimes stressful. My evenings ended the same way my mornings began – with a dose of ibuprofen. There were nights when my hands ached so badly from the day’s tasks that I woke myself up crying. One afternoon, I had a panic attack about hot dogs. There were moments when I vowed we would never be able to move because we’d never get the house ready. And I definitely cried a little, but there was always some new task to focus my attention on, so the tears waited and multiplied.
I taught myself how to cut quarter round trim. Gomez and I learned how to use a pneumatic brad nailer. When he wasn’t busy making new friends, Elroy learned how to rip out carpet.
And then, one day, we realized we had done all we needed to do, that any work we haven’t finished yet can wait until evenings or weekends or snow days or school breaks. It was time to move.
The overwhelmed feeling and wallering punched me in the guts on our first night here. For the first time in a year, we ate supper off of our own plates and drank from our own cups. For the first time in a year, I was able to store all of my clothes in my own dresser, instead of in plastic, shoebox-sized totes. For the first time in a year, Elroy had his own room with his own furniture. For the first time in a year, we showered in our own shower. And as those realizations came into focus, I started to waller.
I wallered in gratitude, and I cried happy, thankful tears.
I am so grateful for the generosity that has been shown to me and mine. I’m grateful for the person who offered to let us park our camper on her land. I’m grateful for everyone who kept an eye out for homes for us. I’m grateful for everyone who checked in on us. I’m grateful for people who loaned us tools. I’m grateful for those who offered to come help work on the house. I’m grateful for those who offered to help us move, and for those who spent a hot Saturday morning carrying, loading, and unloading furniture. I’m grateful for our plumber/electrician who helped me and Gomez by doing jobs that we were out of our depth on. I’m grateful for our our neighbors’ warmth. I am grateful for every kindness that has been shown to us throughout this process.
Most of all, though, I am especially grateful for Gomez. Gomez stuck with me and saw me through the worst year of my life, even though he was having a tough year, too. He let me be sad when I couldn’t be anything else, listened to me when I needed to rage or complain about this or that, and stepped in and picked up the slack I wasn’t able to carry. He listened patiently and without judgment as I tried to process all of the upheaval I was feeling. He worked alongside me and indulged my crazy paint color ideas. He didn’t get angry with me when I threatened to poke his eye out with a yard stake. I am forever grateful for the stability and consistency that Gomez brings to my life.
I’m grateful for having our own space to spend time together in. This afternoon, Elroy told me and Gomez that his favorite time in the new house is the time we spend together in the family room after dinner. That’s my favorite time, too.

Finally

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(I started this post right before we closed on our house, then forgot to finish writing – I’m guessing because I got distracted by Pinterest or HGTV.  Since I started this entry, we have fixed up what we needed to in order to move in and we have spent two whole nights here. I’ll be posting my thoughts and ramblings about the updating process (and pictures!) in the coming days and weeks.)

When we decided to move, our plan was to “double-up” with my mom for a few months, six months max.  A few months quickly became six, and then six months developed into (almost) a year.
But hopefully, that is all about to change.

Ladies and gentlemen, we found a house.

She’s a beaut. A 1965 brick ranch packed to the gills with colorful carpet, wallpaper, pastel ceramic tile, and a half-mirrored wall. I am so excited to be in our own place that I’m actually looking forward to the long days of hard labor that are in my immediate future. I’ve compared costs and made spreadsheets and shopping lists. We’ve picked out paint samples, then picked new colors when I changed my mind.  We’ve mentally moved in and rearranged our furniture at least a dozen times.

Backstory

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18 years ago, just a few weeks shy of my 21st birthday, I loaded what little furniture and few belongings I had into a moving truck and ran away from my hometown. I got married. I graduated from college. My husband and I bought a house and had a son. Last summer, we took the opportunity to move back to my hometown, a decision that kicked off a chain of highs and lows, warmth and isolation, contentedness and uncertainty.

This year has been, without a doubt, the most difficult year of my life. The highs have been mild, feeling like gentle knolls, while the lows feel like being at the bottom off a quicksand-filled canyon.

We have found ourselves (I’m in my late 30’s and my husband is in his early 40’s) completely starting over, except this time, we are starting over with an 11-year-old son. That raises the stakes quite a bit for us. Starting completely over was not part of our plan when we decided to move. I have spent most of our time here scared and ashamed while facing the realization that moving might turn out to be the worst mistake we have ever made.

We’ve spent the last year as a part of the nation’s “hidden homeless” population. We aren’t living in the street, but we don’t have secure housing of our own. This is due to myriad factors, but the current (read – nonexistent) real estate market in our little town has made it extremely difficult for us to find suitable housing that we can afford on teachers’ salaries. For me, almost all of the lows stem from not having a home to retreat to at the end of a difficult day at work. As an introvert, time alone is what resets my brain, but not having a home of our own means not having anywhere to be alone.

The highs are subtle, but somehow they’re enough to help me make it through the lows. The sunrises here can be breathtaking. The thunderstorms are spectacular if they don’t scare you into hiding in the basement. My husband and son are happily exploring the local fishing scene, and the fishing is good. The sense of community and the kindness of relative strangers have brought tears to my eyes more than once. Every now and then, I hear proof that a hint of my native, Appalachian accent has crept into my son’s own dialect.

And still, I feel lost and homesick for our old life in our old home.