by Carol-Ann Di Matteo

Created on: January 24, 2010

Why I'm glad 2009 is over.....

     The year started off badly....starting on New Year's Eve 2008. I had taken my 74 year old Mom to the doctor, who then sent her to the ER. My Mom has severe emphysema and requires oxygen 24 hours a day. We get to the ER, and by then my Mom was so weak that she couldn't stand on her own. It took the doctors forever to figure out that she had a small blood clot in her left lung. Along with the blood clot, she also had pneumonia, bronchitis, and severe asthma. Five things wrong with her lungs at once. She stayed in the hospital for almost 2 weeks.....

     In the meantime, her ex-husband moved in with us. I already have my own husband, 3 kids, 5 dogs, and my mother. What's one more, right? Except when I don't like the man....that makes a difference. My Mom had been married to him for 21 years, so I grew up with him. He's an alcoholic, and a mean one at that. Fortunately, the novelty of him being a part of my household wore off after a couple of weeks, so he left soon after my Mom got out of the hospital.

     All the while, my husband who suffers from chronic back pain and severe depression. He was taking a turn for the worse. Which was constant worry for me. September 2008, my husband had lapsed into suicidal thoughts, which put him out of work for a month. He went back to work, but it didn't take him long to relapse. He drives a dump truck, which isn't a kind of job that anyone with chronic back pain should be doing. He loved driving a truck though, which overrode the pain and associated depression for a long time.... However, by mid-February, my husband could no longer function and was put on medical leave by the doctor. Just so that you understand the severity of his back problems, he has 5 herniated discs in his lower back, and 2 fractured vertebrae among those 5 herniated discs. He had back surgery 4 years before on three of those same discs, only for them to return to being the same as before he had the surgery....and adding two more. (I don't give that back surgeon any good word-of-mouth.)

     Soon after my husband was put out of work mid-February, my Mom had to go back into the hospital for a virus that she picked up from the first hospital stay. My husband decided to start self medicating for his pain and depression, which was bourbon and water. At the same time, we wound up with a couch sleeper, which was my husband's cousin. The

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