Whiney whiney whine... I need some wine

Completely irrelevant picture of the view from Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina.  Because I told myself it'd be a good idea to start and end this post with happy stuff. 

The title of this post is probably the best title I've ever thunk up.

I've been going back and forth on whether or not this is weird stuff to write about on a blog.  1. Too personal?  2. Very complain-y.  But then I remembered that three people read this blog.  One of them is me and the other two are friends who know this stuff anyway.  So I decided I'd go for it.

Money and health related issues are officially my least favorite issues.  Least.  Leeeeeeeeast.

A while back I mentioned that I had lost my job because of health reasons.  I didn't really go into detail, but I I do remember talking about being happy that at least I could keep my health insurance for two months.

I was happy because at the time, it seemed like I could tackle the big health issues in that time frame.  There are less significant things that would have to be ignored for a little while, but my major issues and surgeries would be taken care of in around eight weeks.  And while losing my job was obviously not super fun, I took on a "let's look at the bright side" view and told myself I'd survive on unemployment and it would be good for my health to have two months to focus solely on going to doctors, changing lifestyle stuff, and recovering.

But then (boom here comes self pity, sorry, but it's one of those days.  I'll be over it tomorrow.) life was like, "lol, Char, did you forget that there's no such thing as a break from bad things happening to you?"

During one of my follow up appointments after my gallbladder surgery, the doctor ordered a blood test.  Over the last few months, I've averaged one appointment to get blood withdrawn a week.  Fun fun stuff.  Bruised arms are my official summer get-up.  So pretty.  Prior to the surgery my liver enzymes were high, but they had hoped they'd go down after surgery.  Unfortunately, they actually got worse.  All of em.

It's probably not a huge deal, and the doctor said not to panic, because they almost definitely would have seen a tumor during surgery if that was the cause, and my numbers aren't quite double normal yet.  It could be something like fatty liver, which isn't a horrible thing, but I have chronic abdominal pain, so it could be severe.  Which is no bueno.

Even though I'm not freaking out over it, since the doctor said he's not freaking out, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't really pissed.  Like very, very frustrated.  I'm alright with having to deal with stuff, and I've been in survival mode forever, so that's fine.  But I'd just like to be able to deal with one problem without having another one pop up.  And another.  And another.  In the past few weeks I've had appointments with the primary, general surgeon, the neurologist, oncologist/hematologist.  And in the next few weeks I have appointments with the obgyn about surgery, a new neuro, and now a GI specialist.  And yeah, I'm grateful to have good doctors.  I just wish I didn't have to go see them so often.  I'd like to have a day with no physical pain.  It really sucks to have a headache 24/7.  Especially since the doctor has told me to stop taking ibuprofen and stuff similar to it.  For the liver.  Stupid liver.

On top of the medical stuff, I hate money.  Or, I hate not having any.

I lost my job because I couldn't commute every day.  They wanted me to start commuting an hour from where I live three days a week, an hour and a half one day a week, and two hours one day a week.  1. Even after the portion that they reimbursed, that would cost $800/month.  Which is half of what I brought home.  That kind of defeats the purpose of a job.  2. More importantly, I have health stuff going on, and I couldn't commute every day because I had doctor appointments.  So even when I scheduled multiple appointments in the same day, I was averaging one to two sick days a week.  I had to take a personal day once so I could get my blood drawn.  That's a twenty minute endeavor.  The thing that made me angry is that I wasn't hired to commute every day.  I was hired to commute half the time, so 2-3 days a week.  (Which would have made dealing with the health stuff fine.)  So being fired for not being able to do DOUBLE what I was asked to do was........ ahem, aggravating.

I only really talked to my close friends about the reason and about how mad I was because ranting about it obviously does no good, but I'm in a mood right now and the more bad things that happen just make me think about it.  Like yesterday, unemployment told me I wasn't eligible for some BS reason.  I'm appealing it and expect to receive it.  But that doesn't mean I wasn't stressed about it.  Especially on top of the liver stuff.

To make things better, I got a summons the other day for an old credit card bill.  In the grand scheme of things, it's not a huge amount of money.  But you know.  Ugh.  So I decided to list all my debt as accurately as possible and to give myself a visual, hopefully making it easier for me to track myself and progress (once I get a job and progress is possible).  I can't decide if I'm glad I made a graph or not.  On the one hand, it's good for me to see where I'm at.  It also makes it harder to ignore.  On the other hand, holy crap.  Seeing it all crushed my soul a little.  That's a LOT LOT LOT of money.  I mean, I think I'll be able to get on track once I have a job.  But being unemployed while being sick just makes thinking about my debt a trillion times worse.  Here it is:

Let the curling into a ball ensue. 

What.  What.  Gahhhhh.

Anyway, hopefully by this time next year, this will be a little less daunting and a little more under control.  But as of today, I basically am experiencing chest pains at the thought of all this crap.  Yikes.

I don't really have an end to this post in mind, so I'll leave with a pretty picture, since I wanted to end on a happier note.

BEARY COOL.  Get it?  Bear? 

__
Charlotte