Showing posts with label denver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label denver. Show all posts

Sunday, June 12, 2016

June Gives Me Love Once Again

It's been a long time since I've been super happy, but I AM.  After so much that we've had to endure in this relocation to Colorado, we finally see the silver lining.  We have a new apartment as of June 10th; a new home.  June has always been a special month for us, for it's when we officially eloped to be wed. June 29th to be exact, so we're right on time, I think.


 We are incredibly thankful to GOD, so very grateful.  Along the way there were those who prayed for us, and those who pitched in to assist.  Living in poverty is the reality for so many chronically ill patients, and in my situation where my spouse is also my caretaker, we've not been excluded from that group of patients.  Being on my own since the age of 16 has been a true journey in itself, but now that I Am someone living with multiple sclerosis and PTSD along with a host of mental and physical conditions  including chronic pain, it's become more difficult. 

There are a lot of other things we needed aside of housing.  Housing will allow us to spend time with our children, for sure, because we have a place for them to come "home" to.  I love "home".  Home is where you make it, for sure, but being in a comfortable and conducive situation is the recipe for a happy home.  I'm striving for that. We came out here with nothing, so once again I'm having to start over.  We need a bed, a sofa, kitchen utensils/accessories, etc.  My husband is working long hours to help provide our needs, but since he's my only caregiver he is limited on what he can do and how much he can do it because he pretty much takes me wherever he goes to ensure my safety.  Until we get "there" financially, it's a struggle. But the best part is not once did he give up on me.  If he did, i'd surely be devastated and I have no idea what that relapse would entail, so I keep prayer in my marriage and in my family life. 

Joy Boy Promotions, Sir Joel Cooper, Binns Al Ndee Al Apache Tribe, and Venita Gaines pitched in first.  Then came Anthony Stuart, Broadway Smoke Shop, Teldren Young, Shanda Howard, Bernice Gardenhire, Victorious Personal and Professional Empowerment Coalition, Wayne Hobbs, and Smoketown Knave.  Most recently Genevvive Toland and Eden Lorvil have pitched in as well. 

Pitching in means assisting me in being able to LIVE with Multiple Sclerosis.  I'm 100% disabled, and now I totally get that. As much as I try to thrive in life, the disability does indeed hinder me.  COmpleting projects has been really hard, but with the assistance of my team it can happen (however i'm rebuilding my team after taking a really bad setback from betrayal).  I feel better with massage therapy to relieve my chronic pain, but again it's too difficult due to cost.  Everything costs.  Everything I need costs.  Things that I don't need due to the dangerous aftermath is pretty much free due to insurance smh.  I wish those things came with life insurance policies smh. So I ask for assistance via donations and my team (those I do have in my corner) and I will help give them exposure/promotions/advertising if they need it. I'm not asking for handouts,just sincere donations with or without expectations. 

This new apartment is the start for a happier life for me. I hope that my husband continues to work hard for his family and I hope people will care enough to help me by donating.  I hope to see ALL my children next month and if not SOME. I hope that my pain will subside (thanks to hubby for picking me up some Aporthcanna relieving body cream from Life Flower Dispensary).  I hope I'll get better.  I hope this touches someone who doesn't have a home to know that prayer and hard work works and sometimes people do pitch in to help us succeed. I hope others will see the light in me and continue to donate so that my light will not dim.  I have faith in all of this.  Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 








Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Transforming

Now that I'm in Colorado, I had to move all of my things here.  Switching states with Social Security and Medicare and taking care essential as well as taking care of business at Human Services. I have to wait until November to see a medical professional but ateast its done. Still looking for housing. And now I have to figure out the children's insurance too.

There are places that allow low income families to rent, but they are hard to come by with the housing as it is. Over 1,000 people are coming into Denver, Colorado's airport every week, moving here. Real estate has gone up, availability has gone down, and homelessness is abundant. I hope to find housing soon before the snow hits.

Like many, I'm sharing housing with others. Its definitely not the peace that I need. Having to conform to others, its not an easy task. I know now that we have got to get assistance in finding the resources needed to find our way around the Colorado ins and outs. Already I'm having issues getting insurance for my kids in Georgia. I have no idea who can assist me, but I know I must find a way. Here it is 2:58am and my roommates have company and I can't sleep around strangers so I have to stay up. This can't happen again, though. I'm thinking on how to make things better for me, so I can be treated like a patient instead of a burden or a target.

I'm learning a lot about people along the way. Not everyone is as courteous as I am not is everyone as kind. It is the things we learn along the way that help pave our paths. I'm growing.

Fingers hurting as I type on the floor of our shared room, I'm trying to take this in, as well. My privacy issues have pretty much reached its pivot and I'm readying a change in my life. Discovering that some people live vicariously while expecting others too shocks me. I've never been so unthoughtful and yet I know others are. I was told the company needed to rest her eyes because she worked late but I know she came to see her friends, smoked with them, etc...she could have gone home  so guess what, she still has to. In the meanwhile, I cant sleep because the room isnt secure. Its 3:12am, but no sleep for me.  As of Nov 1st this place changes. It has to.

I'm tired of moving around. Transition and transformation is huge. Denver is the time and space for change for the better. Change will come.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Panic Anxiety Disorder

Last month was a hard month for us emotionally. The Bennet Colorado experience was both beneficial but also harmful. Initially we felt like we made the right decision on choosing Bennett over Denver, but when you have the opportunity to be off meds for the first time in years, your judgment can be cloudy. Bennett's "unique situation" ended up being a passisve aggressive cestpool of death, isolation, loneliness, and just a whole lot of pathetic people. From having a roommate commit suicide and blaming the landlord ...the landlord being arrested for stalking the neighbor whom she claims murdered her birds, the overly emotional love-scorned so-called mystic, my health being risked by an incoming roommate with active shingles, the inconsiderate remodeling of the restroom including removal of toilet, and the fact that no matter how much we helped out and paid our bills peace was not allowed. We moved after being given two weeks notice to vacate for not agreeing to one on one solo time between the landlord, a self proclaimed "sub" into bdsm and my husband. My husband will never listen to a crazy deranged sub. The experience was really hard. I had to begin asking for outside help, and am still in relapse as of today.
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Mainly I'm having severe panic anxiety. When I was first diagnosed with MS, bipolar and panic anxiety disorder were listed as well. Later Disassociation disorder and PTSD were added. As long as my mind is occupied with relaxing thoughts or clients therapy, I'm fine but as soon as I think about my family being so many miles away or our financial situation, I'm sent into a panic. This is throughout the day everyday. Its not good at all.
Do not exacerbate a panic attack
It is possible that family members and friends will be present during an individual’s panic attack. It is imperative that family members and friends do not escalate the situation by becoming overly emotional. Instead, family members and friends can assist the person who is suffering from a panic attack by remaining calm and reassuring. This is enhanced by, as noted above, being educated about the nature of panic disorder. If family members and friends become anxious, upset, or even angry when their loved one experiences a panic attack, the individual can be adversely affected by feeling guilty, embarrassed, or ashamed. These feelings can often lead to increased anxiety, loneliness, and isolation.
Speaking with Colorado's Human Services department, my husband was able to get resource information for us. We have plans on others coming here to partner with us to lighten the load, but until that happens I can't calm down. If that happens. Thoughts of panic cloud my mind.
Looking for work with/for my husband each day and then re-evaluating the choices of possible jobs has been making me anxious. My only solace is even back in Atlanta I could have relapsed, so at least it's somewhere with safe access.
I miss my children. If I had them with me, I wouldn't hurt as much. I feel so sick inside. I hate living off disability and not being well. I just want to be well. I miss it, too.
Yesterday the doctor approved me to grow well above the normal amount of cannabis for my medical needs. It always surprises me how the doctors are pleased with how the MS is with me...how it could be worst. Cannabis has helped, but in a relapse I'm truly afraid it's not enough. I'm back on xanax and restoril and not happy about it.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Hiccups

I haven't been writing as much as I planned to. Depression and anxiety disrupted my peace of mind.
After I got my daughter situated, my son who is attending freshman semester of college ran into some snags. He needed a laptop. He needed parking for school. He needed food money. On an income that's as low as mine, its been hard to manage but doable... Until now.
So I'm all the way out here in Colorado and my kids are all the way in Georgia and where I am in Bennett, Colorado is nowhere near any possible jobs or public transportation. After a lot of issues here, we are moving closer to Denver and then maybe we can progress more to the point where not only am I healthy but we can help more financially with our children.
Multiple Sclerosis patients go through a lot, as do PTSD patients. Having both of those along with other psychological issues stemming from those is so hard to manage in a stressful environment. Unfortunately, living with others who don't understand that has been toxic to my recovery.  Caring for someone with multiple sclerosis (MS) involves unique stresses and uncertainties. The disease is unpredictable. Caregivers may not know from one week to the next how MS will affect the patient. The patient may experience dramatic mood swings. They may also confront new physical challenges that could require changes to their environment. My main symptom has been severe anxiety. Most anxiety is not caused by medical problems. Anxiety is a mental health disease, and it's often created through a combination of life experiences, coping ability, and genetics. But in some cases anxiety can be caused by something physically wrong, and one example of such an issue is multiple sclerosis.
Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a terrifying disease. While generally rare (1 in every 1,000 women, and 1 in every 3,000 men), the illness can cause a host of physical problems, and unfortunately anxiety is one of them. I go around others and smile and small talk then as soon as I can I escape back to safety in my room.
One of the best first steps as a caregiver is staying calm and assessing what you need to support your loved one. I needed more isolation away from others in our room so he did what was needed. (Sigh) But the things I have learned and experienced have been beneficial to my recovery as well.
During the time when things started looking south, a group of women that I befriended, began bonding with, and began gifting free counciling with online began to form sisterhood with me. They helped me get through some tough times and are still with me.  Jesus (my husband Rafael) spends 24 hours a day with me since our co-partner left, but lately he's had a little break somewhat so he can get some of our business done because they have been keeping me company and calm. By allowing me to help them, I'm able to distract myself from my own stressors. Things had been getting bad. Raf's car accident (when he got hit twice back to back on purpose with the car that his ex friend "B" was driving) began making his body hurt when he did work around the Bennett house which made him not be able to do as much for the house as planned before, which was part of our agreement for staying here, so it became one of the problems at the house anyway. People acted like he was lazy, but really his body hurt and he doesn't have insurance and his main priority is me, and nobody else here cares about his health but me.  We paid our rent, deposits, utilities, gas money, and labor to work off some of the tincture and phoenix tears oil for my treatment and gave it a try but clearly it wasn't working out. There's a lot more to it, but basically it began to come to a head because  On 9/12/15 the other male tenant came and asked me if my husband could pull some weeds out back since they were having a cookout. It was Auset day (Saturday) so i told him we couldn't because we had made plans already. Well, bad news came on our phone from our family and I'd sent off a text message about a death in our family and I also had tremors and we couldn't make it to the cookout to our landlord  but got no response, on 9/14/15 there was attitude towards Raf, and our landlord requested a private meeting with him which we declined because she seemed hostile and actually told me that what she had to say to him she didn't want me to hear because it wasn't nice.... and 9/15/15 we got requests for the landlord to speak with my husband privately again and when we refused to do solo talks with just him and her due to the need of a witness she said if she couldn't have a private talk with him then we needed to vacate in two weeks, on that same day 9/15/15 we received notice to vacate. Its a long story leading up to that but long story short, its time to move on. 

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The last day here according to the email is 9/30/15. Funds are non existent at the moment as far as I can tell but we will find a way. Some nice sisters have pledged to help us out since this was unexpected, so I'm grateful but still a bit afraid until the funds actually arrive. So much to catch up on in future posts, I've been quiet out of fear of backlash but this is what's been going on with me.  The IRS still won't release our funds and I am just so tired of identity theft. My debit card company had to re-issue my new card because someone got it before it got to me. All these financial issues with money we have that won't be released or is somehow blocked... Gotta be a blessing around the corner somewhere, I think. Thank GOD my oldest and his girlfriend are bringing new life into the world soon. I'm so happy to be a grandmother! So with the bad, there is still light.
I've got a headache but we did stock up on food earlier when we had access to transportation so for now we are eating too.
Had I still had the children with me, we would have made different decisions but since my health is the focus and the kids are safe and sound in Georgia, we can move around more freely...so as long as they are alright I know we can make it through. This is just a little hiccup on the road to recovery, and hiccups do go away. :)



The last day here according to the email is 9/30/15. Funds are non existent at the moment as far as I can tell but we will find a way. Some nice sisters have pledged to help us out since this was unexpected, so I'm greatful but still a bit afraid until the funds actually arrive. So much to catch up on in future posts, I've been quiet out of fear of backlash but this is what's been going on with me.  The IRS still won't release our funds and I am just so tired of identity theft. My debit card company had to re-issue my new card because someone got it before it got to me. All these financial issues with money we have that won't be released or is somehow blocked... Gotta be a blessing around the corner somewhere, I think. Thank GOD my oldest and his girlfriend are bringing new life into the world soon. I'm so happy to be a grandmother! So with the bad, there is still light.
I've got a headache but we did stock up on food earlier when we had access to transportation so for now we are eating too.
Had I still had the children with me, we would have made different decisions but since my health is the focus and the kids are safe and sound in Georgia, we can move around more freely...so as long as they are alright I know we can make it through. This is just a little hiccup on the road to recovery, and hiccups do go away. :)