The Ticking Clock

Fooling around with the gofundme site, I discovered that the poster generator doesn't produce an html table graphic, but a real image file. This is good because everything I own, outside of my laptops, is broken. My desktop, busted. My printer, stopped working sometime in November. Even my old minivan needs a tune-up. This is another life-lesson about cancer. It will consume everything in your life. You might end up on the street, naked, alone, and slowly dying. Our government is bound by so many bizarre rules, so much that hinders those who need help, it seems like the palsied aunt who comes for a visit, tries to help with the dishes, and breaks everything she touches.

At least I won't starve. I am disqualified from Social Security's many programs, in part because I am, very slowly, getting better. Also in part because I seem to disappear from their screens. It is caused by the great gift I gave my parents, starting around 1990. I became their part-time caregiver, living in near poverty, driving home every weekend, sometimes during the week, taking crappy part-time teaching jobs at local community colleges so I'd have the time to drive home and help Mom with Dad. Then 2000 came and Mom's dementia symptoms appeared. After that, I was traveling home to help Dad with Mom. Dad had congestive heart failure. We got him out to around twelve years. He was 84 when he died in 2002. Mom, we got her out to nine years, to 93. Average life expectancy for someone after first onset of dementia symptoms is 4.5 years. We more than doubled that for Mom. Seven years with no work, as her 24/7 caregiver. My loving gift to them. How I still miss them!

So I won't starve and I have medical insurance, thanks to the state of New Mexico. They won't help to keep a roof over my head, but they will keep me alive. Without the one, I don't really see why they bother with the other two.

I'm not lazy, I never have been. I do work a little on my laptop every day. I mostly try to get my old comics listed on etsy.com (https://www.etsy.com/shop/RPBird). Nobody's buying.

Unless I have to go back on chemo soon, I think if I can make it through the next three or four months, I can get a day job, get back to a halfway normal life. But these next three or four months, that's the problem. I can't tell, my tiny improvements aren't linear. Up one day, down the next. Could be a couple months, could be five. If someone could tell me, that'd be great. Even my doctor doesn't know.

This certainly is a roundabout update. If you can't donate, but you want to help, send me an email (rpbird.bird@gmail.com) and I'll send you the poster image. It's a jpg file. You can print it out and post it. I'd deeply appreciate it.  An image of it is below.

https://www.gofundme.com/cancersurvival

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Links:
https://www.gofundme.com/cancersurvival
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
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