Hell of a Year

I’m not one to rant or open up to others but I’ve kept so much bottled up I feel like I just need to post something somewhere for someone to read.

I know everybody has good years and bad years- the past year for me was a nightmare.

The Background:

I’m a single child who has a very close relationship with my mom, and a healing relationship with my father after a rough childhood with him. I have a girlfriend of 2 years who I love dearly through our ups and downs. And I have a dog (Nadya) who it would be impossible for me to love more. This is my circle.

Background with Nadya:

At the end of 2020 my parents and I were attempting to adopt a dog after 2 of our long time family dogs passed away. But due to Covid it was incredibly difficult to adopt at that time. In December of 2020 I got Covid really bad, and missed over a month of work, lost 30lbs during that span, and was in bad shape. During that time I wasn’t talking to any of my friends or anyone just because of how I was feeling. Around this time I got news that one of my former coworkers who I became close friends with, Nadya, had committed suicide. I knew that she was troubled as I kind of acted as her “crutch.” She would open up to me about her feelings, about her addiction, about her mental health after just having a baby, and we’d talk pretty much daily. But when I got sick she was one of the people I stopped talking to. So I took it very hard and placed a lot of blame on myself for not being there for her. I stopped looking for dogs, I stopped everything. A couple of months later I decided it would be good for me to try and adopt a dog again- the first one that popped up, her name was Nadya. I contacted the pound that she was at- they told me that she had already been returned to them 3 times, she was a troubled dog, etc.. I told them I didn’t care and I’d adopt her no matter what. Since then Nadya and I have been inseparable.

2023:

Dad:

In March/April of 2023 my mom called me while I was at work to go check on my dad. She was spying on him on her dog camera and noticed he had gone limp on the couch. My job was about 5-10 minutes from there house- while her job was about 35 minutes away. I sped over there and found my dad unresponsive on the couch. He still had a strong pulse and was breathing but he was unconscious. I was yelling at him, smacking him, doing whatever I could to try and wake him up, but nothing worked at first. Eventually I was able to kind of wake him up but he was in a completely out of it state. I was able to carry him to the car and rushed him to the hospital where they put him in ICU where they kept him for over a week due to his blood CO2 being critically high among other issues.

Nadya:

In April of 2023 I noticed Nadya started having these spots appear all over her body and after a couple of days I decided I needed to take her to the animal ER as I couldn’t get a vet appointment anywhere. They told me very flatly that she had virtually no platelets in her blood, she had some form of autoimmune disorder, and that she would most likely die in a matter of days. To say I was broken at that point would be an understatement. I decided I wanted to get a second opinion no matter what- and I was able to get squeezed into a vet a couple days later due to a fortunate connection my parents had. That vet put Nadya on a couple of different medications and let me know she will make a full recovery albeit her condition will be something that needs to be monitored for the remainder of her life. (She’s doing good to this day.) As I left the vet- my mom informed me that she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Momma:

When my mom told me her diagnosis I felt like my world imploded. I left my job to go work at her job full time (she has worked there for 43 years and I worked there part time so I was familiar with them), I organized fundraisers of all sorts, went to every chemotherapy session, every radiation session, every doctor appointment, everything. I had to miss a lot of work, I had to take a pay cut to move to that job, and I added a 70 mile round trip commute- so gas prices have been killing me. But I was able to help my mom travel her journey and that’s all that mattered. As she finished her radiation treatments in October- my dad was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

Dad:

When my dad was diagnosed I felt numb to everything and in disbelief. I couldn’t wrap my head around both of my parents being diagnosed with cancer let alone in the same year. Same as my mom- I went to every single one of his chemotherapy treatments, doctor appointments, brought/cooked him food almost every morning on my way to work, and did all I could. Last week he had surgery to remove the tumor from his stomach. They had to remove 2/3 of his stomach. He is still in the hospital at the moment although he hopefully will be coming home this week.

Me:

I feel drained, numb to life, empty, etc. I feel like I need to talk to a therapist but I honestly can’t afford it especially with my current paycheck to paycheck living situation since starting at the other job. I feel stuck.