The Mito Hole

Well, it's been 9 days since my last post and things haven't gotten any better.  Of course, you probably don't know what I said in my last post since a whole whopping 7 people read it.  I'm setting records here!  Then again, I'm also not writing anything very insightful at the moment either.  Recently it's been more bitching than insightfulness.   And unfortunately, that's not going to change with this post.

Earlier today, when I was out running an errand despite having zero energy and having increased weakness and pain, I was giving some thought to why I've been sick so much recently.  It occurred to me that the reason why I've been sick more often was because of what I was doing at the time... running an errand... better known as activity.  I will explain...

Because of our increasing problems with money and inability to pay our bills, my dear husband has had to work a lot extra recently.  Just last week he worked almost 60 hours, 12 of them being on a Sunday night from 5:30pm to 6am and then taking a hour long "nap" before going in to his regular job at 8am.  As you can imagine, he was exhausted that night and for a couple of days afterward.  Unfortunately, that also fell at a time that I was having another mito crash.  So I wasn't able to help with much of anything.  In fact, I just added more work for him to do since he had to take care of me.

Of course, with how much he's been having to work recently, I haven't had much of a choice but to help with things.  Life goes on whether I'm sick or not.  The problem is that the more I do, the sicker I get.  The more my husband works, the more I have to do, whether I'm already sick or not.  But since I still can't do very much, things don't get done around here as much as they need to be - i.e. laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc.

I just wish we had someone to come help us once a week.  If we had help once week for 3 or 4 hours, we would be in much better shape.  Laundry would get caught up, some cleaning could be done, and a couple of errands could be run, and maybe even transport my 13y/o to soccer practice.  I had someone who did just that for a couple of months when we had the money (after I got my disability back pay).  When we started struggling with money again we had to let her go.  Then, when I was getting sicker and had palliative care, they sent a volunteer who came once a week for 2-2 1/2 hours and helped with everything I listed.  She continued coming for a few weeks after palliative care was discontinued but she stopped helping as much and sat and visited instead.  We did okay for awhile during the summer because I had more good days than bad and my oldest daughter wasn't in school so she was able to help with everything.

Of course, if you're a regular reader of my blog you've already read my post Chronic Financial Illness Part II.  As I said in that post, being ill would be SOOO much easier with money.  I don't mean winning the lottery kind of money.  I just mean having enough money to pay our bills with a little extra each month kind of  money.  If so, we could pay our bills so my husband wouldn't have to work extra.  We could pay someone to come help us each week and/or we could pay someone to come clean our house once or twice a month.  That doesn't count how much easier my life would be and how I could probably be healthier if we had the money for the equipment and medications/supplements I need and have been prescribed.

So... I hardly see my husband.  We still don't have enough money to pay our bills, besides having any money for anything extra that might make life fun and/or interesting.  I am more sick than usual with more bad days than good recently.  Things are piling up around here.  And, as I discussed in my last post, I don't have friends knocking down my door and the phone's certainly not ringing off the hook (or at all).  Not to mention the fact that Christmas is already weighing heavily on my mind. (the weight being the burden of having to get help from a charity just to give our kids xmas presents... which is a huge weight for an independent person like me who hates getting handouts and who has never been "poor" in my life.)
...and that's just the big stuff.

Sometimes I just don't want to do it anymore...