St Patrick’s Surprise: High Five for Me
Sooo guys. I got it. The elusive Covid-19 vaccine dose I had been crawling all over everyone and myself to get, finally I got contacted on Lucky Day to get. Of course I got the email and was almost running out the door to get it, giving myself an hour and 5 minutes to get showered and run. I did that and got myself goggled and masked up, VERY excited, I was just about dancing on the stool to get it. My story poured out of me to the nurse, though the reason for that is because I have nobody else to high five in most moments, totally stranded here without any real link to anyone besides Don. She got just as excited for me as I was–and now, now, I get some peace of mind starting on May 1, about a year from when they told me that valve would last 6 months.
And so now my brain has to settle into this idea that I can no longer worry about expiring from Corona, it has to worry about making it through yet another open heart surgery, my third experience with my chest cracked wide open, heart messed with, rewired and set in a red line again. I realize I maybe was too eager to get in line for the surgery-but since it is already, as the scan said, experiencing severe stenosis, there’s no chance I get to escape doing it. I’ve delayed it so much already I know there’s just a countdown at this point to when it’s no longer an option to opt out. I’m actually positive all this stress I’ve put myself through trying to ensure I didn’t die of something I COULD control not dying from perhaps fucked me up a bit more than I should have let it. But, ultimately I didn’t have a ton of control over that, because as I’ve mentioned before, you are your own best advocate, and sometimes realizing that involves you stomping your heels and yelling at people on phones to ensure you are being heard.
So two days later I am tired, the arm is sore and I am trying to clean the apartment and figure out how to GTFO of this place. Poor Don is doing all he can, but the rent here is literally 4 times what it was when we lived at Corona, ironically enough, and he is making less than we were when we lived in Aurora on a combined income. So I have to figure out my half, or what I can add even if it’s a third–because it would make a huge difference, and let us live somewhere better, like we had planned before we had to pick up and move our lives away. We had a deposit we got back on a big apartment down near the baseball stadium in Denver, as we were ready to live our big life and my friends were excited, I was excited and Don was excited to move near the art galleries and whatever action you could imagine a cow town like Denver could provide. This was a little over a year ago we were supposed to be living that life, and now we are so so far from that life and our lives and what we made for a home for ourselves that starting over all over again without any fucking support has been not as much fun as I imagined.
It’s been brutal. It’s the expense, it’s the isolation, it’s the fear of what is next for us. It’s the fear I won’t be able to make enough money to help him. It’s the fear we will be stuck here or I will die or I will get fucked up or maybe not wake up, or maybe wake up forgetting even more of my life than I have. I don’t know how to solve this exactly, I just have ideas. I’ve never really been one to throw my hands in the air and give up, but right now I just need some help to figure this out and I have to find a way to help myself. I want to be productive and valuable again and respected. I want to be able to buy my own clothes and get my hair done when I want to and feel good again. I want to help Don and myself and I want to feel like me again. I just need this stupid shit out of the way so I can ensure the efforts I make aren’t for a dying cause. Because I just might be the cause. And though that is true, I am not ready to accept that end just yet.
