As the years loom ahead of us, it seems the dark cloud on the eastern horizon gets darker. The "fiscal cliff."
The aging process continues as I face each day with new revelations my body tells me: "no more knee socks" as the pressure on the patella makes it painful to do anything but be immobile (HAH!). The Stelera works. It's helped my psoriasis--well and now there is a slight flair up. But it's working. The dark cloud again looms ahead...all of the complications that could occur and will eventually cause me to abandon another drug. Once upon a time, I would have never considered this drug, but faced with a quality short life vs. a non-quality short life, I have chosen the one that, short term, is less excruciating. I thank Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Stelera, for their generosity and financial aid to make this possible.
No full time job and no great gift from the wise men "health insurance." Jobs applied for are at best, answered by a form letter, at worst, not acknowledged at all. I spent about $150 on an outfit for a job interview, to look my best, this fall, for an interview. Not even a courtesy rejection letter was written by the company thanking me for my time. (Can I write off the clothing?)
The "fiscal cliff."
There are a few that have raised possibilities: hope remains when we can be constructive about our situation. Gardens, other self-supporting means. Barter. Being prepared for what lies ahead.
I think of my grandmother and the Great Depression of the 1930s. She took in ironing, sold eggs. Her husband was handicapped from WW I and an operation that left him in pain and an invalid for the next 20 years. Widowed at 52, she continued in her journey. Left with two babies from my uncle, she lived on a non-working farm hand to mouth. She'd fear the sound of the wild cats at night, alone in the farm house on an old dirt road, fearing they'd smell the babies and come take them. In and about 1956, my parents and sister moved in with her briefly, and I was born. The babies, by then, had been taken back by my uncle. Gram was alone. Fast forward to 1962, she had her own apartment and worked for the Races', housekeeping and childrearing. When that was over, she had a few odds and ends jobs, but they never worked out for very long. The main idea here, though, is that, all of her life, she was a fighter. She made the most of her world. Starting as a Wisconsin farm girl, making her way to New York, finding her husband and living her life, she truly lived. She wasn't rich, but she never felt poor, like she could have. I never thought of her as poor, though she had the right to be. And she didn't live off the system, either.
Are we ready, as we face our "fiscal cliff?"
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