A Family Update

Somebody said in an e-mail to me earlier this week that I owed no one an explanation of what was going on here. On the contrary, I think I do. When I ask for your help in donations and support, when I am literally begging for help, I owe you an explanation of everything going on and in detail. My life and by extension all of our lives, is an open book.  

It has been a rough week. I fell a number of times, especially in the last two days, which is always scary and painful. Nothing broken but my bruises have bruises that have bruises.  I am considering outsourcing my bruises overseas as I have far too many and no way to support them.

Thursday was the one year anniversary of my mother-in-law’s passing. An anniversary made even more painful for Sandi because the person responsible for handling the estate has failed to give Sandi or her brother the personal items that were to be theirs or finalize the estate situation. It is just a mess and one that is not going to go away anytime soon. Missing her Mom is hard enough, but the garbage that has been deliberately caused around it makes everything so much worse.

Thursday also meant it was time to go to the doctor again. Sandi saw the knee doctor Thursday morning and the news was not good. We kind of expected bad news as her lower leg in the bone bruise area had in the last week started hurting just as much as it ever had and the knee itself was swollen again and painful. A new complication was the fact that the upper leg, the area above the knee, was now giving her considerable pain as well.

So, we knew going in that most likely another injection was off the table and something more serious would be coming. He looked again at everything and her MRI, etc. and now believes that what little meniscus she has in her knee is shredded and not salvageable. He believes she is pretty much a bone on bone situation and deteriorating. He has her scheduled for some sort of knee scoping deal on the 13th (how we shall pay for this--a well as everything else-- I have no idea) to clean out the debris and inject some sort of artificial cartilage type junk to pad things in there. He wants her cleared by the general practice doctor and all of her records for the last decade to make sure she can safely be put fully under so that he can do all this on her knee. He believes the knee is collapsing on itself and this is causing stress down the leg and that is why her leg is so badly bruised below the knee and getting worse as well as muscle tearing above the knee. Yes, the muscles in her upper leg are starting to separate and let go in his opinion because the knee is collapsing.

The only other option is an immediate total knee replacement.

So, assuming this works, she will be on crutches a minimum of four weeks after surgery and at some point will start doing physical therapy. While her work can’t actually help with anything as they reserve that for fulltime folks only, they have been supportive of her and understanding.

We had already alerted the food stamp folks three weeks ago to what was going on by phone and by mail. We had been told  that all we had to do was send in copies of the paperwork from work and the doctor and they would be added to our case and adjustments would be made for whatever we qualified for based on our new situation.

We found out yesterday that is all bogus bull –you-know-what.

Things can never, ever, be simple.

Instead, what we have to do is fill out their new application when it arrives, send it to Midland, Texas for processing and wait for them to schedule another phone interview for Food Stamps, Temporary Aide to Needy Families, etc. We also need to resend copies of everything we have been sending the last month since she went on unpaid medical leave as well as have those involved fill out a couple more forms. All that has to be received and processed and then they will have to schedule the phone interview, evaluate everything and decide if we qualify for whatever.

Basically, instead of just adding the current data and adjusting the account for our worse off situation, we have to start over from scratch and have a brand new case and everything. They have up to 45 days once they get the new application which means the clock just keeps ticking with no help in the meantime.

I have no idea what we are going to do. We are past due on everything and somehow have to come up with money for surgery too. Despite explaining the situation to the medical folks, no allowances or breaks are allowed because it is a business and they just can’t afford to make a concession for one patient over another.

While I do understand their point, it does not help us at all.

We aren’t bad people. Just broke people. We did not choose this.