TheHalloweenGoddess
08-28-2013, 05:45 PM
I hope some of you remember me ;)
I was a big participant on R&F during the WJFK years. I first started listening to R&F during the night hours on WNEW. I am native NYer from Manhattan and I was raised up there and North Jersey. I currently live in a small town called Culpeper, VA.
When the R&F show moved to Fairfax, VA, I was able to be a part of the show in my own small way. I worked in a specialty costume store not terribly far from the station and I helped the show with anything costume related. I created the Elfish outfit he wore on stage at Dave and Busters as he performed Elvis songs. I was pretty involved, mostly behind the scenes, with staff and other listeners. Made friends with a lot of the guys and interns. R&F were always tremendous to me and many nights, unbeknownst to many of the other listeners, I was sitting right there in studio quietly next to Ron.
I was not particularly a mike-whore at the time and many times I just wanted to watch the magic that was the R&F show LIVE and in-person. The guys were always incredibly gracious to me. I was there for Turducken Thanksgivings and became friends with Kathleen from the Bronx, Bri Bri, Crazy Jen and Perrynoid. Over time I also got involved with The Hideout and became the 'official' photographer for J-Dubs and El Jefe's antics on late night.
I dropped off the face of the earth shortly after R&F moved back to NY and left terrestrial for XM. Every bit of my life and attention had to be re-focused. I got the Big Casino. Cancer. And then it got worse!
January 2005. Routine medical exam reveals a small growth on my thyroid. My doctor orders a series of tests. Each test takes about a month. By the final test on May 27 reveals thyroid cancer. By May 31, the left half of my thyroid is removed. I was informed that my life would return to normal with the exception of many follow up medical tests and procedures. LOL YEAH RIGHT!!!!
JUNE 2005; One month after my cancer diagnosis, my spouse George of 13 years informs me that he didn’t want to be with a sick person, and I quote 'I didn't sign up for this'. I was stunned. He could no longer take me being sick all the time. (Aside from the cancer I had a chronic KNEE condition, not really sick, per se) He moved out to the coast of NC and I was left with my three sons, mortgage and facing the cancer situation alone.
Oh and just leave it to me to get the cancer that makes you fat!!! I had never been so huge in my life! My max weight pregnant with massive babies was only 175 when I was in my twenties. I ballooned to 236 pounds by the end of 2005.
Feeling my worst, looking terrible, puffy and tight and being sick as a dog from all the other things low thyroid does to a person. Despite all this...I meet a man named Mike. A really, really good man. We met in an amazing way which is another long story for another time. He gave me the hope and positivity I needed to fight the cancer and recover. We lived 75 miles apart and started a commuting relationship between Culpeper, VA and Springfield, VA. Holy hell the traffic we battled to see each other!!!
Because I had become a single mom of 3 teenagers I could not keep my varied-hour retail job that I had maintained while married to George. I needed to make serious money and get good health insurance due to my cancer. I changed jobs and landed an awesome gig at Lockheed Martin by early 2006.
Lockheed Martin Job goes along well. Day to day I battle the issues related to the cancer. Still struggling with serious hormonal imbalances due to the fact I was not producing adequate hormones with half a thyroid. To make matters worse, my chronic knee issue flared up, my left knee cartilage collapsed in early 2008. Bleeding bone against bone. I needed a replacement knee but the cancer issue took priority over the leg. I was trying to deal with horrible chronic pain in my joints in conjunction with the cancer. I got a brilliant new endocrinologist and I needed my entire thyroid removed. Surgery was scheduled and in October 2008 the healthy remaining half of my thyroid is removed.
Except that isn't exactly the case. Turns out after the surgery and only revealed in pathology the right half was a Petri dish of new cancer growths. One of which was in my lymph nodes. I need further radiation to kill even individual cells that are cancerous. This radiation causes me to be radioactive, quarantined from family, sick and I lose a lot of my hair. Not bald but alopecia style in patches. The radiation causes a temporary tumor under my tongue and I lose my sense of taste throughout the holiday season that year. Water tastes like saltwater; everything is off, wrong and terrible. I am puffy and tight like Jerry Lewis was a few years back. The end of 2008 sucked and early 2009 wasn't much better.
I was living in a vicious cycle. I couldn’t lose weight unless my leg works, feeling lethargic from cancer, hormones keeping me fat, pain from joints becomes unbearable and I become wheelchair bound. Now I’m rolling my ass into work at Lockheed Martin! Then I finally get the insurance OK for knee replacement. Surgery was scheduled for October 2009.
Two weeks before my knee surgery, The Great Recession hits Northern Virginia and Lockheed Martin has major layoffs and I lose my job. Everyone tries to cheer me up by telling me that I can just recover, focus on my healing and find a new job. Hard to focus on getting better when to keep up my COBRA insurance it took up all of my unemployment earnings! I couldn’t pay my bills or buy groceries. Shit was getting really bad!!
I had my knee replacement surgery. It was like a miracle. I have had a lifetime of chronic pain, arthritis, medications and multiple knee surgeries in a bid to PUT OFF getting the replacement because I was too young at the time and I would outlive my knees and have to have additional surgeries. But this replacement....was a dream come true. I was up and walking within hours and I left the hospital on my third day. I told all physical therapists to fuck off and I did my OWN healing regimen.
By December 2009...6 weeks after my surgery I made a 3 mile round trip mountain hike. Then the thyroid treatment new synthroid kicks in and with proper meds and NO DIETARY CHANGES my excess weight just starts to come off. Physically I was starting to feel stronger. I WAS DECLARED THYROID CANCER FREE JANUARY 2010.
January 15th, 2010 I posted a long update to R&F.net message board, updating my new Cancer Free status. Little did I know that within 30 days of that posting the CANCER WAS BACK!!!!
Two weeks after my cancer all-clear, on Valentine's Day 2010 my wonderful boyfriend Mike proposes to me. We set the date for 10-10-10! I now have 8 months to plan a wedding!!! The future looks so bright now!!!
You didn’t think things would be THAT easy, did you?
MARCH 2010: I have an unusually heavy period. I go to a GYN who ultrasounds and finds a large tumor in my uterus. Probably benign. Doc wants an ablation and D&C to clean things up in there. Sure, why not? I schedule a cleanup and tumor removal which is a minor surgery but still needs anesthesia. I’m down for a few days and sore.
APRIL 2010: The D&C reveals I have endometrial cancer. It takes a few weeks to find a surgeon and set the plan of action. I’m almost out of money to continue paying for COBRA insurance. Cancer again! FUCK!!
MAY 29th, 2010: Total hysterectomy, including ovaries. I've been rendered a female eunuch before I'm to be married to the man I love that stood beside me through it all. Great. I really deserved that irony.
Now remember...during this entire ordeal...I’M STILL UNEMPLOYED LOOKING FOR A JOB!!
Oh wait...AND I'm trying to plan a wedding AND trying to get my mortgage modified before foreclosure since I’ve had issues paying all the bills.....how the FUCK can I get a job and do any of these things if I keep having fucking SURGERIES and CANCERS damnit!!!
JUNE 2010; I can only secure a shit retail position at a big box office supply store I'll call Paperclips. This motherfucking job was so terrible that after 8 weeks I had to go to my doctor for depression meds! Even my Doc knew something was wrong because I'm not a depressive and never needed anything to help cope during the cancer!! But I needed meds to cope with that shithole.
JULY 2010; I was running a register at work at Paperclips about 2 weeks into the job and as I lifted a printer at the checkout counter, my intestines fell out of my abdomen and into my cavity. Right in front of a customer I had to push my guts back into place with a squishing sound. I could not move, so I used the counter as a way to hold my intestines in by pressing against it as hard as I could as I smiled and pretended nothing was wrong! After the customer left I quietly asked to take a break, went into the back room, got duct tape and taped my stomach tight to keep the hernia closed and my lower bowel in place. I was so broke I couldn't lose the hours by going home early!!!
AUGUST 2010; Finally got my Dr. to fix my hernia, which he did and used lots of mesh to pull my guts together. I have had over 25 surgeries to date, about 7 or so on my abdomen.
SEPT 2010; OH YEA...I forgot, I'm supposed to be getting married! PLAN WHOLE WEDDING IN 3 WEEKS!!!
OCT 2010; We marry outdoors on the cheap, only family attend, a lovely, peaceful day.BAM....Walk down the aisle swollen from surgeries but I did it! Relief!! Drive around the mountains of NC and VA for 5 days in a perfect honeymoon. Can I PLEASE move on with my life now!!!!!
NOV 2010; Wells Fargo refuses to modify my mortgage after stringing me along for months. I have to be out in 30 days. Hubby loses his job!! Must use next week to find a new house and employ my husband!! I had to file bankruptcy. Game over.
DEC 2010; We find a beat up, old, damaged repo home in a rural, wooded area and close on it with the help of family member to co-sign the loan. We see the potential in everything and we have ideas about fixing up and beautifying this place. My dream of having an animal rescue here because it is secluded! But at the moment…in 13 degree weather we need to pack and haul boxes!! It was freezing my hands hurt moving boxes in the cold!!
JAN 2011; Took a whole month making tiny loads with a pickup truck but I finally removed my life of 13 years from my former home to the new, secluded, repo home. The failure I felt at losing my house was colossal. I was pretty depressed then, it was hard to stay positive. I decided to really throw myself into this house and not focus on the past but damn it was hard letting go. My youngest son gets a 16 year old girlfriend named Kia. She is a good girl with a terrible mother issues, just constant fighting all the time. She has had a very tough upbringing and household and yet you can see she looked to me as a parental figure. She seemed smart and witty and I really liked her.
FEB 2011; If I don't get the fuck out of the job I'm in, I'm going to kill myself. PAPERCLIPS is the worst retail hell I have ever had to endure. I have GOT to find another gig!!
MARCH 2011; HOLY SHIT!! I landed a fucking dream job!!! I'm talking BOOYAH!!! I become the executive assistant to Senator Colgan's son, Chuck Colgan Jr. I get a nice office, mahogany desk, laptop and I am to assist him in the grand reopening of the Manassas Airport Freedom Museum dedicated to the fallen soldiers of Fauquier (and local) counties of all wars . I work with a curator and I start to process artifacts from 1900 onward pertaining to war paraphernalia. I am so happy and focused on the grand reopening of the museum May 6th.
APRIL 2011; FINALLY got some paydays and life was not hand to mouth for the first month in forever!! I got to breathe a bit! The future looked bright!!!
MAY 3, 2011; CRASH!! 3 Days before museum dedication, my boss has a heart attack. It doesn't kill him but it puts him down for the count. Takes early retirement to recover....JOB ENDS ABRUPTLY!!
HOLY SHIT....... WTF did I do to deserve this!!!!! So now I was back to being unemployed. This time with no unemployment from the govt. I couldn’t fix up the shithole we bought because IT was a repo and without dough I'm not getting very far in repairs. My house is still in boxes and wires sticking out of the walls. We are living on plywood painted brown to imitate a floor, no carpet or hardwood yet. Just living like shit being broke. Back to the internet to find a job!
JUNE 2011; UNEMPLOYED, Job hunting online, unpacking boxes from the move. Minor construction in house must begin in a variety of rooms. Painting walls, etc. I sell off many possessions on Craigslist to try to generate funds.
JULY 2011; Spend hours walking around new property picking up broken glass and trash. Cans everywhere, glass bottles. WTF did these people do???? Begin to really daydream about turning this place into an animal rescue!!
AUG 2011; Just filling a dumpster with yard trash and gutting rotten sheetrock from the house. My son's girlfriend Kia and her mother get into a huge blowout and her Mom threw her out. She was 16 and had no other family and no place to go, so I took her in. Kia comes to live with me. I become her Foster Mother.
SEPT 2011; I finally land another shit retail job at a place we'll call ANIMALCO. What a fucking DUMP and UGH they treat the animals like SHIT!!!! At least the management. My co-workers were very caring and sweet people who truly loved animals. But the corporate side….yuk.
OCT 2011; Drove to visit my Grandma in NC. Just a nice, relaxing weekend. We had an amazing day out with my cool Grandma. Went to the movies, out to a restaurant then we watched a concert in the street. We got home to her house and the phone rang. Her Dr just informed her she had stage 4 liver cancer. Out of the FUCKING BLUE!! We rally together and vow to research all options!! I start to drive frequently from VA to NC to be with her. Every 4 days I was making a 6 hour one way trip. Every dime I had went to gas to drive it!! My new Manager at ANIMALCO starts to threaten me with my job over the time I request to spend with my grandmother. I was only an employee for 4 weeks so I can see their point but damn he was a dick about things.
NOV 2011; My grandmother passes away. The most important person in my world from my birth is gone and I'm a fucking train wreck. Six weeks!! From the day we found out to her being gone! My best friend on the planet, gone so fast. My boss threatened to fire me if I did not report back for my shift causing me to come back to VA and not be at her bedside. 24 hours later she died. I hate him with every fiber of my being. And I hate myself for being so broke and job scared that I put up with his monstrous behavior but I now live in fear of losing the place we have now. So I was afraid to up and quit because unemployment ran out.
DEC 2011; I'm not right with my mind. Minor nervous breakdowns because I'm in mourning seriously and I go on auto pilot. I can't fathom getting thru the holidays. All I was thinking about was losing my Grandmother, my Mother is coping with losing her Mother and we are all kinda fucked up at the moment.
Then, in an even more shocking turn of events, my son’s girlfriend Kia’s mother passed away from a heart valve malfunction. This poor girl who had recently turned 17 is now a fucking orphan. I put my own grief aside to help Kia get through the shocking, sudden loss of her mother who was only 34 years old!!
JAN 2012; I got into a huge fight with my manager and I needed to get my district manager involved. I am miserable. I miss my Grandma, I hate my job, and my life is in emotional turmoil coping with Kia. She has no family worth a shit; they are all distant cousins who couldn’t care less about her being motherless. As I pull out of ANIMALCO parking lot after a particularly rough day, I see a car pull out in front of me. Caring Touch is plastered in the window and it is advertising being an old person care giver. When Grandma was sick, most of the hospital staff thought I was her paid caregiver because I knew what I was doing. I was relying on my experience with working in a nursing home many years ago. Since everyone at the hospital already thought I was a professional caregiver, I figure maybe I need to be doing THIS full time. It helped me grieve.
I now work as a personal caregiver to hospice and Alzheimer patients.
FEB 2012; Within 10 days of me seeing the advertisement for CARING TOUCH, I get an interview and a job!!! I usually work 45-60 hours a week, 12 hours a day. I was hustling as much as I could to save money for my animal rescue. Then I find out that my youngest son, a Senior was going to graduate high school just fine but Kia his girlfriend, was flunking out!! She was hiding it from me but sabotaging her education, deliberately missing the bus and almost threw her graduation away! She was in mourning and depression it being less than 2 months since she lost her mom. But I had no legal recourse to help her!! I could not take her to a doctor, or access her school records because she was a minor and I was just a nice person who allowed her to live with me.
MARCH 2012; I went to court to become Kia’s legal guardian and took charge of her school and transportation. Shifted my schedule to drive them to school to see to it she got there, no skipping, made sure she had boundaries and did homework and extra credit. I managed to save her graduation!!
JUNE 2012; Graduation goes off without a hitch! Not one single member of Kia’s family showed up to watch her walk. She lost her Mother 6 months before, and BOTH of her Grandparents when she was 14. She has almost nobody other than a few estranged Aunts and Uncles (think The Wild Whites of WV) she is the first person to graduate high school in her family since her grandfather. Yet nobody could bother driving to see her. I was there!!
JULY 2012; For the next few months all my husband and I focused on was working and trying to fix up this property. It’s big enough to fence off areas and make a big yard and home for shelter dogs to rescue. Kia finds out that she inherited her mother’s house a mile from me and that is where she now lives.
AUG, SEPT, OCT, NOV DEC 2012 has been devoted to working on my property, trying my damndest to turn it into an animal rescue. It is a heavily, wooded lot. Fixing up the house, trimming and cutting trees, doing landscaping for free, got free mulch from local tree trimmers, just busy work, doing what we can to make the house nice and set up places on the property to take in animals. I’d love to save up for a small barn!! The rest of my time is spent helping Kia fix up HER repo home, which is in way worse shape than our house, so it’s been rough fixing up two homes and yards!!
JAN 2013; The Company I worked for, Caring Touch, just goes out of business! Great, now I need to find another job. Luckily, I find the same type of job quickly. Unfortunately, I now make $9.00 an hour and can only get 30 hours a week. That was a big, fucking financial hit!!
MAY 2013; Kia and Alex come to me for Mother’s Day. I get a lovely card from both of them. Inside the card….an ultrasound picture. I’m going to be a GRANDMA!!!!!! When is the baby due?? ON MY GRANDMA’S BIRTHDAY!!! I KNOW this would have had her so excited!!!
The scary thing is…the kids are young. They will be parents at 19. They’ll always have me to help them but this is life. We are all doing our best to deal with it.
Which is what brings me to why I need help today. I have never asked for help for myself throughout EVERYTHING I went through. Not thru the cancer, divorce, losing my job, my home, filing bankruptcy…..I just dealt with it as best I could. I have no family other than my kids in VA (Mom and brothers in NC) I don’t need it for me, I’m terrified, but I need the help for my kids.
It turns out before Kia’s mother died, she never paid her taxes on the house. All paperwork pertaining to her death was supposed to be handled by Kia’s biological Grandfather. He is the executor of the will, and he told Kia and Alex to just fwd him all mail and he’d handle the rough stuff.
Well….he lied. He handled nothing, paid nothing and Kia and Alex found out that their house will be put up for auction on September 15th, 2013 for the $1,500.00 in back taxes!!! We can no longer locate the executor of the will. We need to get a lawyer involved to force him to give a copy of the will to his own granddaughter!
My heart is broken! I cry all the time now and I don’t know what to do! I can’t come up with the $1,500.00 and they could lose the house!! They already posted the address in the local paper and they will auction that home!! She’s due to give birth in a few weeks!! I’m doing all I can to not have this happen!!! I tried to start a GoFundMe account but after a week I think we just broke $100.00. I don’t know very many people. I’m desperate, and I’m begging for anyone in the R&F audience to please, dear please, find it in their heart to donate to my gofundme account.
http://www.gofundme.com/Takiyah-Baby-Tax-Fund
Anything you could, even if it were just $1.00. I’m terrified that the only good thing that has happened in my life during the past few years (a Granddaughter after surviving cancer is like, a really super special thing to me) is going to have a life crushingly different start. Both Kia and Alex are working at our local big box retail store. As a parent I feel like a complete failure because I thought I’d be at a better point in my life so that I could provide for them in ways any Grandma would. But constantly getting kicked in the teeth by life sometimes seriously sucks. Like Beannie would help for Dave’s kids. You know what I mean. I’m crying now as I type this because I feel like shit for begging, but I am. I’m begging. Please, if anyone cares about these sorts of issues, please help. Just donate anything you can to
http://www.gofundme.com/Takiyah-Baby-Tax-Fund
Kathleen and Bri Bri can vouch for me! Jafter and Giant Brian. El Jefe, J Dubs. They know I’m a real person, we hung out a few times back in the day. The last time I saw everybody was for the Bob Saget Unmasked. When they brought the R&F show to the DC xm side. We hung out and partied with Johnny Fairplay the night before. I still listen every day to R&F, though unfortunately as you can see I’ve not been as active a participant as I’d like to be in the post show world of message boards and Twitters.
Well….I guess I’ve poured my heart and soul out into this entry. I hope it appeals to anyone out there who has been hit with a seemingly endless stream of drama and medical situations. Please, I’m asking for any size donation and at the very least, if you can’t donate, just share it. Maybe someone else can help!! Thank you all so much for your time. Love,
Halloween Goddess. http://www.gofundme.com/Takiyah-Baby-Tax-Fund
I was a big participant on R&F during the WJFK years. I first started listening to R&F during the night hours on WNEW. I am native NYer from Manhattan and I was raised up there and North Jersey. I currently live in a small town called Culpeper, VA.
When the R&F show moved to Fairfax, VA, I was able to be a part of the show in my own small way. I worked in a specialty costume store not terribly far from the station and I helped the show with anything costume related. I created the Elfish outfit he wore on stage at Dave and Busters as he performed Elvis songs. I was pretty involved, mostly behind the scenes, with staff and other listeners. Made friends with a lot of the guys and interns. R&F were always tremendous to me and many nights, unbeknownst to many of the other listeners, I was sitting right there in studio quietly next to Ron.
I was not particularly a mike-whore at the time and many times I just wanted to watch the magic that was the R&F show LIVE and in-person. The guys were always incredibly gracious to me. I was there for Turducken Thanksgivings and became friends with Kathleen from the Bronx, Bri Bri, Crazy Jen and Perrynoid. Over time I also got involved with The Hideout and became the 'official' photographer for J-Dubs and El Jefe's antics on late night.
I dropped off the face of the earth shortly after R&F moved back to NY and left terrestrial for XM. Every bit of my life and attention had to be re-focused. I got the Big Casino. Cancer. And then it got worse!
January 2005. Routine medical exam reveals a small growth on my thyroid. My doctor orders a series of tests. Each test takes about a month. By the final test on May 27 reveals thyroid cancer. By May 31, the left half of my thyroid is removed. I was informed that my life would return to normal with the exception of many follow up medical tests and procedures. LOL YEAH RIGHT!!!!
JUNE 2005; One month after my cancer diagnosis, my spouse George of 13 years informs me that he didn’t want to be with a sick person, and I quote 'I didn't sign up for this'. I was stunned. He could no longer take me being sick all the time. (Aside from the cancer I had a chronic KNEE condition, not really sick, per se) He moved out to the coast of NC and I was left with my three sons, mortgage and facing the cancer situation alone.
Oh and just leave it to me to get the cancer that makes you fat!!! I had never been so huge in my life! My max weight pregnant with massive babies was only 175 when I was in my twenties. I ballooned to 236 pounds by the end of 2005.
Feeling my worst, looking terrible, puffy and tight and being sick as a dog from all the other things low thyroid does to a person. Despite all this...I meet a man named Mike. A really, really good man. We met in an amazing way which is another long story for another time. He gave me the hope and positivity I needed to fight the cancer and recover. We lived 75 miles apart and started a commuting relationship between Culpeper, VA and Springfield, VA. Holy hell the traffic we battled to see each other!!!
Because I had become a single mom of 3 teenagers I could not keep my varied-hour retail job that I had maintained while married to George. I needed to make serious money and get good health insurance due to my cancer. I changed jobs and landed an awesome gig at Lockheed Martin by early 2006.
Lockheed Martin Job goes along well. Day to day I battle the issues related to the cancer. Still struggling with serious hormonal imbalances due to the fact I was not producing adequate hormones with half a thyroid. To make matters worse, my chronic knee issue flared up, my left knee cartilage collapsed in early 2008. Bleeding bone against bone. I needed a replacement knee but the cancer issue took priority over the leg. I was trying to deal with horrible chronic pain in my joints in conjunction with the cancer. I got a brilliant new endocrinologist and I needed my entire thyroid removed. Surgery was scheduled and in October 2008 the healthy remaining half of my thyroid is removed.
Except that isn't exactly the case. Turns out after the surgery and only revealed in pathology the right half was a Petri dish of new cancer growths. One of which was in my lymph nodes. I need further radiation to kill even individual cells that are cancerous. This radiation causes me to be radioactive, quarantined from family, sick and I lose a lot of my hair. Not bald but alopecia style in patches. The radiation causes a temporary tumor under my tongue and I lose my sense of taste throughout the holiday season that year. Water tastes like saltwater; everything is off, wrong and terrible. I am puffy and tight like Jerry Lewis was a few years back. The end of 2008 sucked and early 2009 wasn't much better.
I was living in a vicious cycle. I couldn’t lose weight unless my leg works, feeling lethargic from cancer, hormones keeping me fat, pain from joints becomes unbearable and I become wheelchair bound. Now I’m rolling my ass into work at Lockheed Martin! Then I finally get the insurance OK for knee replacement. Surgery was scheduled for October 2009.
Two weeks before my knee surgery, The Great Recession hits Northern Virginia and Lockheed Martin has major layoffs and I lose my job. Everyone tries to cheer me up by telling me that I can just recover, focus on my healing and find a new job. Hard to focus on getting better when to keep up my COBRA insurance it took up all of my unemployment earnings! I couldn’t pay my bills or buy groceries. Shit was getting really bad!!
I had my knee replacement surgery. It was like a miracle. I have had a lifetime of chronic pain, arthritis, medications and multiple knee surgeries in a bid to PUT OFF getting the replacement because I was too young at the time and I would outlive my knees and have to have additional surgeries. But this replacement....was a dream come true. I was up and walking within hours and I left the hospital on my third day. I told all physical therapists to fuck off and I did my OWN healing regimen.
By December 2009...6 weeks after my surgery I made a 3 mile round trip mountain hike. Then the thyroid treatment new synthroid kicks in and with proper meds and NO DIETARY CHANGES my excess weight just starts to come off. Physically I was starting to feel stronger. I WAS DECLARED THYROID CANCER FREE JANUARY 2010.
January 15th, 2010 I posted a long update to R&F.net message board, updating my new Cancer Free status. Little did I know that within 30 days of that posting the CANCER WAS BACK!!!!
Two weeks after my cancer all-clear, on Valentine's Day 2010 my wonderful boyfriend Mike proposes to me. We set the date for 10-10-10! I now have 8 months to plan a wedding!!! The future looks so bright now!!!
You didn’t think things would be THAT easy, did you?
MARCH 2010: I have an unusually heavy period. I go to a GYN who ultrasounds and finds a large tumor in my uterus. Probably benign. Doc wants an ablation and D&C to clean things up in there. Sure, why not? I schedule a cleanup and tumor removal which is a minor surgery but still needs anesthesia. I’m down for a few days and sore.
APRIL 2010: The D&C reveals I have endometrial cancer. It takes a few weeks to find a surgeon and set the plan of action. I’m almost out of money to continue paying for COBRA insurance. Cancer again! FUCK!!
MAY 29th, 2010: Total hysterectomy, including ovaries. I've been rendered a female eunuch before I'm to be married to the man I love that stood beside me through it all. Great. I really deserved that irony.
Now remember...during this entire ordeal...I’M STILL UNEMPLOYED LOOKING FOR A JOB!!
Oh wait...AND I'm trying to plan a wedding AND trying to get my mortgage modified before foreclosure since I’ve had issues paying all the bills.....how the FUCK can I get a job and do any of these things if I keep having fucking SURGERIES and CANCERS damnit!!!
JUNE 2010; I can only secure a shit retail position at a big box office supply store I'll call Paperclips. This motherfucking job was so terrible that after 8 weeks I had to go to my doctor for depression meds! Even my Doc knew something was wrong because I'm not a depressive and never needed anything to help cope during the cancer!! But I needed meds to cope with that shithole.
JULY 2010; I was running a register at work at Paperclips about 2 weeks into the job and as I lifted a printer at the checkout counter, my intestines fell out of my abdomen and into my cavity. Right in front of a customer I had to push my guts back into place with a squishing sound. I could not move, so I used the counter as a way to hold my intestines in by pressing against it as hard as I could as I smiled and pretended nothing was wrong! After the customer left I quietly asked to take a break, went into the back room, got duct tape and taped my stomach tight to keep the hernia closed and my lower bowel in place. I was so broke I couldn't lose the hours by going home early!!!
AUGUST 2010; Finally got my Dr. to fix my hernia, which he did and used lots of mesh to pull my guts together. I have had over 25 surgeries to date, about 7 or so on my abdomen.
SEPT 2010; OH YEA...I forgot, I'm supposed to be getting married! PLAN WHOLE WEDDING IN 3 WEEKS!!!
OCT 2010; We marry outdoors on the cheap, only family attend, a lovely, peaceful day.BAM....Walk down the aisle swollen from surgeries but I did it! Relief!! Drive around the mountains of NC and VA for 5 days in a perfect honeymoon. Can I PLEASE move on with my life now!!!!!
NOV 2010; Wells Fargo refuses to modify my mortgage after stringing me along for months. I have to be out in 30 days. Hubby loses his job!! Must use next week to find a new house and employ my husband!! I had to file bankruptcy. Game over.
DEC 2010; We find a beat up, old, damaged repo home in a rural, wooded area and close on it with the help of family member to co-sign the loan. We see the potential in everything and we have ideas about fixing up and beautifying this place. My dream of having an animal rescue here because it is secluded! But at the moment…in 13 degree weather we need to pack and haul boxes!! It was freezing my hands hurt moving boxes in the cold!!
JAN 2011; Took a whole month making tiny loads with a pickup truck but I finally removed my life of 13 years from my former home to the new, secluded, repo home. The failure I felt at losing my house was colossal. I was pretty depressed then, it was hard to stay positive. I decided to really throw myself into this house and not focus on the past but damn it was hard letting go. My youngest son gets a 16 year old girlfriend named Kia. She is a good girl with a terrible mother issues, just constant fighting all the time. She has had a very tough upbringing and household and yet you can see she looked to me as a parental figure. She seemed smart and witty and I really liked her.
FEB 2011; If I don't get the fuck out of the job I'm in, I'm going to kill myself. PAPERCLIPS is the worst retail hell I have ever had to endure. I have GOT to find another gig!!
MARCH 2011; HOLY SHIT!! I landed a fucking dream job!!! I'm talking BOOYAH!!! I become the executive assistant to Senator Colgan's son, Chuck Colgan Jr. I get a nice office, mahogany desk, laptop and I am to assist him in the grand reopening of the Manassas Airport Freedom Museum dedicated to the fallen soldiers of Fauquier (and local) counties of all wars . I work with a curator and I start to process artifacts from 1900 onward pertaining to war paraphernalia. I am so happy and focused on the grand reopening of the museum May 6th.
APRIL 2011; FINALLY got some paydays and life was not hand to mouth for the first month in forever!! I got to breathe a bit! The future looked bright!!!
MAY 3, 2011; CRASH!! 3 Days before museum dedication, my boss has a heart attack. It doesn't kill him but it puts him down for the count. Takes early retirement to recover....JOB ENDS ABRUPTLY!!
HOLY SHIT....... WTF did I do to deserve this!!!!! So now I was back to being unemployed. This time with no unemployment from the govt. I couldn’t fix up the shithole we bought because IT was a repo and without dough I'm not getting very far in repairs. My house is still in boxes and wires sticking out of the walls. We are living on plywood painted brown to imitate a floor, no carpet or hardwood yet. Just living like shit being broke. Back to the internet to find a job!
JUNE 2011; UNEMPLOYED, Job hunting online, unpacking boxes from the move. Minor construction in house must begin in a variety of rooms. Painting walls, etc. I sell off many possessions on Craigslist to try to generate funds.
JULY 2011; Spend hours walking around new property picking up broken glass and trash. Cans everywhere, glass bottles. WTF did these people do???? Begin to really daydream about turning this place into an animal rescue!!
AUG 2011; Just filling a dumpster with yard trash and gutting rotten sheetrock from the house. My son's girlfriend Kia and her mother get into a huge blowout and her Mom threw her out. She was 16 and had no other family and no place to go, so I took her in. Kia comes to live with me. I become her Foster Mother.
SEPT 2011; I finally land another shit retail job at a place we'll call ANIMALCO. What a fucking DUMP and UGH they treat the animals like SHIT!!!! At least the management. My co-workers were very caring and sweet people who truly loved animals. But the corporate side….yuk.
OCT 2011; Drove to visit my Grandma in NC. Just a nice, relaxing weekend. We had an amazing day out with my cool Grandma. Went to the movies, out to a restaurant then we watched a concert in the street. We got home to her house and the phone rang. Her Dr just informed her she had stage 4 liver cancer. Out of the FUCKING BLUE!! We rally together and vow to research all options!! I start to drive frequently from VA to NC to be with her. Every 4 days I was making a 6 hour one way trip. Every dime I had went to gas to drive it!! My new Manager at ANIMALCO starts to threaten me with my job over the time I request to spend with my grandmother. I was only an employee for 4 weeks so I can see their point but damn he was a dick about things.
NOV 2011; My grandmother passes away. The most important person in my world from my birth is gone and I'm a fucking train wreck. Six weeks!! From the day we found out to her being gone! My best friend on the planet, gone so fast. My boss threatened to fire me if I did not report back for my shift causing me to come back to VA and not be at her bedside. 24 hours later she died. I hate him with every fiber of my being. And I hate myself for being so broke and job scared that I put up with his monstrous behavior but I now live in fear of losing the place we have now. So I was afraid to up and quit because unemployment ran out.
DEC 2011; I'm not right with my mind. Minor nervous breakdowns because I'm in mourning seriously and I go on auto pilot. I can't fathom getting thru the holidays. All I was thinking about was losing my Grandmother, my Mother is coping with losing her Mother and we are all kinda fucked up at the moment.
Then, in an even more shocking turn of events, my son’s girlfriend Kia’s mother passed away from a heart valve malfunction. This poor girl who had recently turned 17 is now a fucking orphan. I put my own grief aside to help Kia get through the shocking, sudden loss of her mother who was only 34 years old!!
JAN 2012; I got into a huge fight with my manager and I needed to get my district manager involved. I am miserable. I miss my Grandma, I hate my job, and my life is in emotional turmoil coping with Kia. She has no family worth a shit; they are all distant cousins who couldn’t care less about her being motherless. As I pull out of ANIMALCO parking lot after a particularly rough day, I see a car pull out in front of me. Caring Touch is plastered in the window and it is advertising being an old person care giver. When Grandma was sick, most of the hospital staff thought I was her paid caregiver because I knew what I was doing. I was relying on my experience with working in a nursing home many years ago. Since everyone at the hospital already thought I was a professional caregiver, I figure maybe I need to be doing THIS full time. It helped me grieve.
I now work as a personal caregiver to hospice and Alzheimer patients.
FEB 2012; Within 10 days of me seeing the advertisement for CARING TOUCH, I get an interview and a job!!! I usually work 45-60 hours a week, 12 hours a day. I was hustling as much as I could to save money for my animal rescue. Then I find out that my youngest son, a Senior was going to graduate high school just fine but Kia his girlfriend, was flunking out!! She was hiding it from me but sabotaging her education, deliberately missing the bus and almost threw her graduation away! She was in mourning and depression it being less than 2 months since she lost her mom. But I had no legal recourse to help her!! I could not take her to a doctor, or access her school records because she was a minor and I was just a nice person who allowed her to live with me.
MARCH 2012; I went to court to become Kia’s legal guardian and took charge of her school and transportation. Shifted my schedule to drive them to school to see to it she got there, no skipping, made sure she had boundaries and did homework and extra credit. I managed to save her graduation!!
JUNE 2012; Graduation goes off without a hitch! Not one single member of Kia’s family showed up to watch her walk. She lost her Mother 6 months before, and BOTH of her Grandparents when she was 14. She has almost nobody other than a few estranged Aunts and Uncles (think The Wild Whites of WV) she is the first person to graduate high school in her family since her grandfather. Yet nobody could bother driving to see her. I was there!!
JULY 2012; For the next few months all my husband and I focused on was working and trying to fix up this property. It’s big enough to fence off areas and make a big yard and home for shelter dogs to rescue. Kia finds out that she inherited her mother’s house a mile from me and that is where she now lives.
AUG, SEPT, OCT, NOV DEC 2012 has been devoted to working on my property, trying my damndest to turn it into an animal rescue. It is a heavily, wooded lot. Fixing up the house, trimming and cutting trees, doing landscaping for free, got free mulch from local tree trimmers, just busy work, doing what we can to make the house nice and set up places on the property to take in animals. I’d love to save up for a small barn!! The rest of my time is spent helping Kia fix up HER repo home, which is in way worse shape than our house, so it’s been rough fixing up two homes and yards!!
JAN 2013; The Company I worked for, Caring Touch, just goes out of business! Great, now I need to find another job. Luckily, I find the same type of job quickly. Unfortunately, I now make $9.00 an hour and can only get 30 hours a week. That was a big, fucking financial hit!!
MAY 2013; Kia and Alex come to me for Mother’s Day. I get a lovely card from both of them. Inside the card….an ultrasound picture. I’m going to be a GRANDMA!!!!!! When is the baby due?? ON MY GRANDMA’S BIRTHDAY!!! I KNOW this would have had her so excited!!!
The scary thing is…the kids are young. They will be parents at 19. They’ll always have me to help them but this is life. We are all doing our best to deal with it.
Which is what brings me to why I need help today. I have never asked for help for myself throughout EVERYTHING I went through. Not thru the cancer, divorce, losing my job, my home, filing bankruptcy…..I just dealt with it as best I could. I have no family other than my kids in VA (Mom and brothers in NC) I don’t need it for me, I’m terrified, but I need the help for my kids.
It turns out before Kia’s mother died, she never paid her taxes on the house. All paperwork pertaining to her death was supposed to be handled by Kia’s biological Grandfather. He is the executor of the will, and he told Kia and Alex to just fwd him all mail and he’d handle the rough stuff.
Well….he lied. He handled nothing, paid nothing and Kia and Alex found out that their house will be put up for auction on September 15th, 2013 for the $1,500.00 in back taxes!!! We can no longer locate the executor of the will. We need to get a lawyer involved to force him to give a copy of the will to his own granddaughter!
My heart is broken! I cry all the time now and I don’t know what to do! I can’t come up with the $1,500.00 and they could lose the house!! They already posted the address in the local paper and they will auction that home!! She’s due to give birth in a few weeks!! I’m doing all I can to not have this happen!!! I tried to start a GoFundMe account but after a week I think we just broke $100.00. I don’t know very many people. I’m desperate, and I’m begging for anyone in the R&F audience to please, dear please, find it in their heart to donate to my gofundme account.
http://www.gofundme.com/Takiyah-Baby-Tax-Fund
Anything you could, even if it were just $1.00. I’m terrified that the only good thing that has happened in my life during the past few years (a Granddaughter after surviving cancer is like, a really super special thing to me) is going to have a life crushingly different start. Both Kia and Alex are working at our local big box retail store. As a parent I feel like a complete failure because I thought I’d be at a better point in my life so that I could provide for them in ways any Grandma would. But constantly getting kicked in the teeth by life sometimes seriously sucks. Like Beannie would help for Dave’s kids. You know what I mean. I’m crying now as I type this because I feel like shit for begging, but I am. I’m begging. Please, if anyone cares about these sorts of issues, please help. Just donate anything you can to
http://www.gofundme.com/Takiyah-Baby-Tax-Fund
Kathleen and Bri Bri can vouch for me! Jafter and Giant Brian. El Jefe, J Dubs. They know I’m a real person, we hung out a few times back in the day. The last time I saw everybody was for the Bob Saget Unmasked. When they brought the R&F show to the DC xm side. We hung out and partied with Johnny Fairplay the night before. I still listen every day to R&F, though unfortunately as you can see I’ve not been as active a participant as I’d like to be in the post show world of message boards and Twitters.
Well….I guess I’ve poured my heart and soul out into this entry. I hope it appeals to anyone out there who has been hit with a seemingly endless stream of drama and medical situations. Please, I’m asking for any size donation and at the very least, if you can’t donate, just share it. Maybe someone else can help!! Thank you all so much for your time. Love,
Halloween Goddess. http://www.gofundme.com/Takiyah-Baby-Tax-Fund