Don’t Have That Luxury- Part 6

Fatigue Challenge

There’s another challenge, which for me, is even more debilitating than the foot thing. Six years ago, I came down with a weird drop-dead fatigue, which at first I chalked up to having taken Algebra for five months. I figured Algebra would do that to anyone. But my doctors said it was caused by a tumor on my parathyroid, which was pulling the calcium out of my bones, and damaging my nerves with it. (Kind of an overly simplified explanation.) They said that once the tumor was taken out, the fatigue would go away, but it didn’t. 

For roughly a month at a time, I usually need at least a two hour nap during the day, in spite of a full night’s sleep, and sometimes it’s closer to five hours. And when I’m not sleeping, the brain fog quite often makes it difficult to think and write, so I’ve learned to live very quickly, when I get my month of relative normality. 

In college days, I had to do roughly three months worth of homework in one month, or I’d never be able to pass the classes, not when I needed to sleep twelve to fifteen hours a day. Obviously doing housework, other than keeping the laundry and dishes cleaned and feeding myself, did not take top priority of my time. When I felt good, I cleaned.

Same thing happens with writing the blog now; I go like a Jack Russell and write ten or fifteen posts, and then use blogging software to date them so they get posted on the blog over most of a month. That way, I don’t have to worry about getting them posted in the middle of a brain fog.

So far, no doctor has been able to figure out why the fatigue is still here, or what to do about it. Prescription anti-depressants to keep serotonin in my head longer don’t work for me at low doses, and make my dizzy and barfy at higher doses. The only thing that seems to let me function in the middle of a fatigue cycle without massive amounts of sleep, at least half the time, is a big dose of pop and carbs. So, if anybody out there can figure out how to get rid of this sleep monster, I’ll gladly give you a free massage.

A SIDE NOTE: Despite having an Algebra teacher who knew how to make math understandable and the class an absolute blast, you will never convince me that Algebra did not cause my tumor and darn near killed me, either from uncontrollable convulsions, or from a heart attack. And I never plan to let him forget it. You never know when it’ll come in handy to blackmail an Algebra teacher. 

Continued Monday

Don’t Have That Luxury- Part 5

Foot Challenge

So, here I am, three years after graduating from massage therapy school, finally having grown up enough to want to make my own living, want to get myself out of debt, and desperately want to get myself independent of governmental “help,” sitting on a $40,000 loan, most of it in interest, in a very bad economy, with a spotty work record, a damaged body, and at the age of 45 years old. 

And there are some new challenges to add to the list of things that make this journey so exciting and motivating for me. Because of the flat-footed problem, ten years ago, I could stand for fifteen to twenty minutes before the body started really whining at me, and then basically crumbling if I didn’t sit down pretty quickly. Now, after twenty-some years of the feet damaging the structure of the rest of the body, the body crumble is down to about three minutes. 

It used to be I could carry pretty much anything I wanted to. Now the hips threaten to rip out if I carry anything over about thirty pounds for very far. I’ve lost more than one job because of it. The feet are kind of okay if I’m walking or moving, which is why I can do a few massages, but it exhausts me so much that takes a couple of days to recover if I do it for very long at all. 

To Be Continued Tomorrow

Don’t Have That Luxury- Part 4

I Found Out Something Interesting

I found out something interesting.  If you have defaulted on student loans, a college’s Financial Aid Department won’t touch you for seven years, and you have to have made some sort of monthly payments on the loans for at least one year. So, being the clever girl that I was, and still finding it much easier to live on the state than to make my own living, I paid the bank that held my loans one dollar a month during the seventh year, and then signed up for basic math and English classes, still having no clue what I wanted to do.

 Found out something else that was real interesting. As long as I was in school, I didn’t have to repay the old loan, and could get all the new loans I wanted, even if I only took a couple of classes per semester. That little strategy let me stretch out my education for nearly seven years, before I finally decided on the trade that really fitted my personality. 

I know I’ve given you some rather amusing examples of my immaturity, and it would be easy to conclude that I was simply lazy and didn’t want to make the effort to support myself. But there’s a deeper reason.  You see, I was raised in a family of very resourceful and clear thinking females who were older than me, and therefore had more experience in solving problems, so I never really had to, and up until just a few years ago, I was convinced to my soul that I could not solve any real-world problems on my own. So I let the world do it for me. As much as I envied the people who were doing it every day, it terrified me to even think about being on my own, because I knew I would fall flat on my face, so didn’t even try. And “the system” makes it very easy to continue the pattern; as long as I follow the rules and am willing to jump through the hoops, I don’t have to make my own living.

Don’t Have That Luxury- Part 3

Guess What?

Well, I graduated nine months later with high grades, along with about twenty other people, and guess what? I couldn’t find a job. Not that I put that much effort into it once I figured out how hard it would be to find one. I wasn’t going to “humiliate myself” by begging for a job; they were suppose to come begging to me. If they were too stupid to see my obvious genius, then I’d just stay home and watch TV all day. 

That got little boring after awhile, so when I heard another radio ad, this one for a truck driving school, I thought, ”Why not?” It only lasted six weeks, and they showed me a list of trucking companies who were waiting for new drivers. Well, truck driving isn’t glamorous like being a paralegal, but I’d make a whole lot of money, and not have to work to find a job. 

There was just one little problem; I couldn’t get the hang of driving the stupid things. I ran over every corner I came to, which is a big no-no, and could not back that sucker up to a loading dock without jack-knifing it to save my life. Needless to say, I couldn’t pass the final driving test to get my license, but still had to pay the full tuition. So, I again ended up in front of the television. 

The boyfriend did try to talk to me about finding a job, but it was easy enough to take his mind off of it with a little well placed rubby-rubby, if you know what I mean. It took a few more months before he finally got sick of my nonsense, and bought me a one-way bus ticket back to Michigan. Once there and living with my mom, I figured out that one of those last rubby- rubbys had “worked,” and I was three months pregnant. Surprise surprise. So, I went down to my local Welfare office, found an apartment for my new little family member, lived very frugally on my military disability check, and defaulted on both student loans also.

Still More Stupidity In Two Days