A Rundown of the Rundown of my Life

Part 1: The Rundown (and Run-Out) of My Finances 

My job situation will come soon, and of course the two are related, but I can’t do them both at once; I’ve discovered that there’s a sort of synergy between the rage and helplessness, so I’m trying to narrow my scope.

This is just a description of how I live.

I was fired from my teaching job last year.  It was an awful job, and I’ve never been treated with such disrespect–not by the kids, but by the administration.  I’m not getting into it right now except to say the firing wasn’t justified (understatement), but I did give them an excuse.  After that, someone (the principal) altered my evaluations and lowered my score from mediocre but okay for the first year to bad.  I don’t think I can do anything about it and I never want to teach again, so fuck it.

But that, and possibly whatever reference the person I trusted is giving, combined with the unique nature of the local school district (because reasons, most of the entire city is all part of District S, which is awful. It’s surrounded by several smaller suburby districts.  Anyone with sense wants to work in one of those districts.  Being fired by S means I can’t work at any of their schools, which us almost all of the schools, and I don’t have anything to recommend me over experienced teachers who have finally had enough of District S shit and left to teach the rich white kids.) means I can’t find a teaching job around here, anyway, which I have been looking for even though imagining doing it again makes me want to puke.

I’ve been unemployed since May. My savings lasted through July. I began receiving unemployment checks and food stamps since August. The checks added up to about $1000/month. My rent is $786, my appliances $45 or so, my internet $61, and my electric varied, but usually around $100. I got it down to the $60 range in November and December, and people would tell me I was insane, but that money really helped!

Now add that up and tell me what I had left over for medication, psychiatrist visits, gas in the car, cat food, toilet paper, and other things like that.

Oh, and my food stamps are $38. That’s monthly. Im pretty sure it’s impossible to eat three squares on that, and I don’t.

I don’t eat every day, and what I do eat is mostly dinner rolls–cheap and filling–and bananas. Lunch meat and cheese because I know I need protein. And I visit my parents for dinner at every opportunity. I drink a lot of water and tea. Somehow, my taste for coffee has dwindled.

Months earlier, when I was still teaching, I had broken a tooth right in the front of my mouth. In September,.my dad paid to get it fixed, because it would have been awful in an interview. The remaining stub had to be pulled. When I returned in early October to have the bridge inserted, I had a sore on my tongue. It hurt.

By the next day, I have become extremely ill. I now have a huge canker sore on my tongue and I can barely close my mouth. I can’t eat at all or drink more than the tiniest sip of water. My throat is swollen, and my tonsils are enormous and garish red streaked all over with white. I know I have a fever. The dentist writes some steroids and antibiotics. I take the steroids all at once on the first day, because I can’t bear the idea of six sips of water. I sleep with a towel on my pillow because I am drooling an enormous amount and I can’t keep my mouth closed. Little Baby sleeps by me almost the entire time, even when they have to submit on dry food. I want desperately to go to a doctor. I’m actually afraid that I’m going to die, and not just die, but die in agony.  It a doctor won’t see me, because I can’t pay.  Same with urgent care.  And I I go to the ER and don’t actually die, the bills will finish me off.  So I lay there with Little Baby, and sometimes wake up when Ankhesnamun comes to visit me.  She doesn’t understand why I don’t get up.  I can’t, by then; I have fever and I’m dizzy.

But I get better eventually.

I start tutoring in late October. At first, it’s one student for one hour once a week (it’s not long before we all agree that she needs two), and another student for an hour twice a week with the possibility of her older sister needing help once in a while. This tutoring service only takes 12%, but they negotiate the prices. If everybody keeps their appointments, I make about $100/week.

That $100 helps a lot because, you see, I didn’t make it the autumn without running up my credit cards. One of them had, at the time I gained the ability to start paying them again, a minimum payment of $26, and the other $289. I paid the first one, but i was honest with the second company. They advised me to put any small amount each month that so that I’d still be actively paying, so they got $24. Eventually, they put me on some special payment plan…I don’t understand it, but it means I keep paying what I can and the debt collectors stay away.

I still ask for and receive shampoo, body wash, moisturizer, and face wipes as Christmas gifts. How else was I going to pay for them?

I have insurance this year; because of losing my job and being on unemployment and Donald Trump’s serendipitous fuckery, the premium was subsidized enough that my parents agreed to pay it for me until I can afford it on my own. (They also pay car and dental, if you were curious.) I haven’t been taking all of my medicine and it has been an enormous struggle to pay for the two prescriptions I really had to have, not to mention seeing my psych every three months for about $120.  But even with this insurance, I can’t afford a rescue inhaler.  I tell the pharmacist I don’t want it.

I used to have like three or four and keep losing them, and now I always know where the two I still have–one from 2015, one from even earlier–are, because I can’t lose them.  All I’m talking about are those little plastic thing that asthmatics take puffs of: Albuterol inhalers.  Some people use them preventatively, but the medicine gives me the shakes (and now it’s expensive), so mine is for unusual shortness of breath.  If you can’t breathe, you do two puffs: the first to open up as much as your airway as it can, and the second to get deeper in.  It’s like an epipen, sort of: a lite plastic thing you carry around and don’t think about until you need it–but if you need it, you need it.  Unlike the EpiPen, which is newish, these have been around for decades and they cost like $5, with or without insurance.

Several years ago, the government reauthorized the patent on rescue inhalers in exchange for development of a propellant which was CFC-free.  This was when CFCs were being banned, but the amount in an inhaler is ridiculously tiny: it aerosolizes and propels a miniscule amount of liquid less than an inch, from the plastic thing in your mouth to just outside of it.  Your lungs do the work.

Requiring a new dispersion method, complete with new FDA testing to make sure it was still safe And effective, made a few people a lot of money.  It probably still is, because, now, an absolutely essential, life-saving medication that used to cost $5 without insurance has a copay of $75 with it.  And anyone like me who has a severe asthma attack and couldn’t afford the inhaler can literally just die–die, strangled by their own lungs.  Or have a heart attack; that’s not uncommon, either.  Even the decision to stop using Albuterol to prevent major episodes because it’s so expensive that you want to save it for when you really need it puts you at increased risk of death, and heart attacks, and makes you fucking miserable.  I’d ask if you’ve ever been unable to breathe, for hours at a time, but some of you would say yes and you’d think you meant it, remembering that cold you had once.  It’s more like being force-choked and asphyxiated by Darth Vader.

But this isn’t an entry about the evils of unobtainable pharmaceuticals.  I’ll just conclude by pointing out that I have two, partially-empty, expired-by-years inhalers and that’s going to have to be good enough.

On January 10th, i get a letter in the mail having me fill out and update my financial situation to reassess my food stamps alottment, and, a few days later, another letter saying that a new work requirement regarding food stamps will begin in March. I will have to meet one of a list of criteria in order to remain in the program, which include: working 20 hours a week (don’t I wish), having a disability that prevents me from working, receiving unemployment benefits (this just seems cruel), and a few others that don’t apply to me.

But, wait, I hear you say. You don’t have a disability! It’s true that I would be unlikely to qualify for federal disability, but the standards for being worthy to eat are lower. And I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder on 2010, and re-diagnosed by every shrink I saw. And MDD is a “disability,” that would allow me to continue to receive food stamps while I look for work.

I thought long and hard before deciding that I would ask Dr. Akin for such a letter. It’s not a matter of being legal; I’m certain that it’s exactly what the law intends. Depression is absolutely interfering with my ability to work 20 hours when I can’t find 20 hours of work to do because I spend nearly an entire week unable to get out of bed because of crippling depression. But is it honorable?

What decided me is that “unable to work due to drug/alcohol addiction” is also on the list. This is another condition that can be overcome with time and hard work, and perhaps even alleviated by finding steady work. And that’s the idea.

And so I have no qualms about making this request. And if my psychiatrist says no, I’ll ask my doctor. It he won’t say no, not once I tell him about the week in bed.

I need this to work. For one thing, I should get a more reasonable allowance; for another, it will allow me to sign up for AT&T’s $10/month internet, saving $50/month. I just have to figure out how to scrape by until I can get a job.

And my cat is sick. She won’t use the litter box, she’s skinny but her belly seems swollen, she doesn’t eat as much. She missed her jump to the counter two days ago and just lay there on her side, like she was helpless, until I scooped her up. And I was holding her last night more than she wanted to be held, so she pushed and jumped down and…stumbled and fell over. She’s never done that before. Never.

My dad has said he’ll help me with rent, which is good, because, otherwise, my bank account would be being serious danger of being overdrawn by almost $500 when the check was deposited.

But my parents won’t pay her vet bills. I asked. My mom just doesn’t like cats, is still angry that the kitten I adopted in high school needed $400 surgery and my dad paid it, and thinks that Ankhesnamun should be put to sleep because she’s eliminating on the floor. In her mind, she’d pay to put her down and that was all that was worth doing.

My dad, though…he loves animals. He wouldn’t put their dog down a few years ago, even though maybe we should have–but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. I’m like that. I’ve had nightmares where I’m at the vet with Suna and something is being done and I don’t realize until it’s too late that they’re euthanizing her and I didn’t even pet her and tell her what a good girl she just and how much I love her. God, this is making me cry.

But my dad, he just thinks that vets are frauds. Several years ago, he found the dog unable to walk and his underside covered in maggots. He was obviously dying, but the vet sold him thousands of dollars of trying to save him and then another fee for disposing of the dead dog.

So I’ve started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to take her to the vet and pay for treatment. I posted this in a Facebook OD group and got an absolutely foul reaction from a guy who resented seeing the post. If you don’t to help, or can’t, that’s okay. I understand. Even if you just share it, that might help.

I’m just trying to do everything I can for Ankhesnamun, because I love her so much. She comes to cuddle me when I sit alone for too long. She cries until she gets what she wants. She was such a scrawny, dingy, sneezy kitten, and the moment I saw her I told her that she going to come home with me and we’d take good care of her. It turned out that she was too sick and had to go back to the humane society for almost three weeks before she was healthy enough to live with us, me and Peter and Imhotep.

And she grew into the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen. Her coat has whorls and stripes in every shade of polished wood, honey, amber, caramel…”brown torbie” was no description at all for her. She practically shone; she loved to be brushed, so we brushed her all the time. And she had one little stripe just past her chin that was it’s own color, a color like a citrine. And she ate so much that she became roly-poly.

Her coat is dimmer again, and her shoulder.blades jut. But her golden eyes are as alert as ever, and I know she loves and trusts me.

This entry wasn’t supposed to about this, and now I’m crying and it’s time to wrap up. Anyway, give if you choose. Share if you like. It’s not a command.

Click on Ankhesnamun for her GoFundMe