No End in Sight

Wow, days are rough around here.  James has had a terrible week.  He has felt very sick and exhausted.  He is so tired of a body that doesn't work.  He told me he feels like a piece of skin without a body to make it useful.  He is getting so frustrated that he can't be normal that he decided to stop taking the pain medication.  He just wants to be able to drive himself to work and he can't while taking taking it.  He has been taking pain meds regularly since the beginning of all of this.  The chest pain has been unbearable  The oncologist encouraged him to stay comfortable.  We were initially concerned that he would get addicted, but she felt like that was not something to worry about.  By Friday night, James was waking up soaked and unable to eat or tolerate the smell of any food.  He told me that he had stopped taking the pain medication on Wednesday.  On Saturday, James was so upset, unable to get out of bed and as ready to give-up as I have ever seen him, that I called the on-call oncologist.  He said it was withdrawal from the pain medication and that James should take some then ween off it gradually.  He has been much better.  My brother gave some good ideas for how to ween from it.  If it is not one thing, it is another!

We are also having some back yard issues to top things off.  The slope of our yard has been making it so that our sprinkling system has been flooding our neighbors yard.  They stopped by several months ago to let us know that they could sue over the issue.  They are very nice, they just don't want a swamp, which is understandable. The developer put in our yard so we contacted them.  Almost 4 months later, they contracted with a landscape company to fix the problem.  Long story short, the landscape company put in a rock retaining wall and covered our sprinkling system and 1/3 of our yard in dirt.  They are right that no water is going to get through that, but I can't imagine that anyone has ever asked a landscape company to come and make their yard all dirt so their neighbors don't get anymore of their water.  Hmmm.  We are hoping to get someone out tomorrow.  What a mess.  I guess if we post pictures of snowmen that are made of muddy snow, everyone will know why.

James' sister came today and spent 5 hours sorting through medical bills.  Her help was priceless.  It is a mess. I am expecting to make lots of phone calls tomorrow to get some answers, but at least I know what to ask now.  Anymore we are getting 5-6 bills a day.  We got a bill last week for over $5000 due tomorrow.  I guess the days of 30 days to pay the bills are long gone.  When I asked if I could wait until we got all the bills, I was told we would have to pay 18% interest.  I can see why people just quit trying.  It is awful.

We are hopeful that the "roadwork ahead" sign that is our life will get taken down soon.