Working to get health care is killing me

I haven’t been writing lately due to sheer exhaustion. Working 45+ hours per week is not agreeing with me. I love the job but there’s just way too much of it. I haven’t been able to figure out a balance yet. Anyway, I stagger home each weeknight and collapse. My energy is dwindling, not getting better week by week as I expected it would. I spend all of Saturday sleeping or doing quiet things and then usually by Sunday I feel better, at least enough to cook, shop for food, do laundry, clean my room, do some chores, and get ready for the new week. However, I’m not recuperating enough to have a useful Sunday; at least that has been true these past couple of weeks. Sunday came last week and this and I was too tired to do the self care that I need to regenerate. So I live in a messy room, I don't eat well because I can't get the energy to shop and cook the vegan food I need, and I end up scrounging for clean things to wear. I recently invested in a lot of underwear so that I had three weeks supply. That way, I can just use each piece of the other clothing over and over again. It's more ecological that way.

Last Thursday my clients were waiting for me to come into group therapy. They asked me, “Seiza, are you all right?” I brushed it off, but they persisited. “You look so tired. Really, are you okay?” I realized that I wasn’t really okay at all. I’m completely exhausted all of the time. I’m a piece of burnt toast. I promised them I would get more sleep, but the only way I can figure out to do that is to cut out meditation and yoga in the morning so I can sleep in until 6 am instead of getting up at 5 am.

I need to work to get health care. When I was paying COBRA payments after my last job, it cost $1100 per month to cover Howard and me, which was not something we could afford for long. Howard is no longer working for FKB (which didn't provide health care but did provide money sometimes). He’s going back to graduate school to study for a new career in biology. (He just got accepted to PSU after scoring 1530 out of 1600 on the GRE and a letter of recommendation from Al Gore, no less). Anyway, I’m really working so that we can afford health care, and it’s killing me.

I’m losing ground. I don’t have a solution but that is why I haven’t been writing. I’ve been in survival mode. Anyway, I’m supposed to go out tonight to a seder with friends but I may have to give up that as well. I end up giving up everything that is personally important to me these days, socializing, community organizing, meditation, and yoga.

I don’t have any solutions. I’m trolling the usual websites for job listings, hoping to find something part time with benefits. As was pointed out to me, the United States does not have a Health Care System. It has a health care market. That’s not good enough for any of us. I may be one of the currently insured, but I am not healthy as a result.

I'm told it takes about two years to really get one's energy back after chemo, but my energy is plummeting at this point. I'm one year out from chemo and I'm getting worse, not better.

The Front Porch of Heaven

I've been writing bad poetry. It's one of my new skills. I was actually on the radio last night, on KBOO, reading one of my poems:

The Front Porch of Heaven

Long ago, when I was a little girl,
I was told I would never go to heaven,
Having never been baptized.
No, I was one of those heathen Unitarians,
Practically an atheist in the eyes of my playmates,
And I could never enter heaven’s gates. I was told
I could only hang out on the front porch of heaven
And peek through the windows at the delights
Within the walls that kept me out.

Right then and there
I decided to learn to play the banjo.
I hoped that God, being merciful,
Would provide me with a rocking chair.
No doubt there would be other heathens and Unitarians
And assorted unbelievers
On that wide, long porch.
Perhaps some would have guitars, mandolins,
A bass and a fiddle or two.
Surely there would be a drummer in the crowd,
And maybe a sax, trumpet, and trombone,
All the makings of a decent pick-up band.

Now I play a banjo in anticipation of the day
I cross over and find myself on that cosmic front porch.
I plan to have a right good old time
Playing my banjo for the assembled outcasts.
I want to be buried with an inner tube,
A packed lunch, a pump, and my banjo,
Just in case the Egyptians were right
And I have to take it with me to have it there.
When I land on that other shore, I’ll pump up the inner tube
And float down that eternal river
Strumming my banjo,
Until I float right up to the front porch of heaven,

I think of the singing and the songs we’ll play there.
I think of the dancing and joking and good times to be.
I imagine that my fellow heathens and I
Will make a joyous, raucous sound,
Singing and dancing until that front porch shakes the gates
And rattles the windows of heaven
And all the denizens within, will look out.
Feet tapping, hungry to join the party,
They will surge out the gates,
Pile onto the front porch,
And spill onto the front lawn of heaven.

Dancing and singing and playing,
We’ll be whirling with the angels
Far, far into eternity, through the night sky,
Leaping from star to star.
O heavenly choirs, O joyous dance.
O come, all ye of all faiths and non-faiths,
Come join us on the front porch of heaven.