Life’s Decisions

    So I was finally able to finish my first blog post yesterday. I did not get a 'jump up and down' feeling from posting it but more of a 'hope I am doing this right' feeling. Blogging is such a new experience for me and I am really not quite sure how I should be feeling but overall I guess you could say that I am feeling good about. See feelings are a big part of who I am and how I write. I tend to take all my emotions and pour them into my writings. It is such a wonderful outlet even if no one ever reads a single word I write.
    In my first post I talked about needing an outlet for what I am going through, so I decided that my second post should be a backdrop to what is going on in my life at this moment. My third post will be all about how I am feeling right now and my fourth post will be an article I wrote about being a SuperMom. I will be posting all of them in rapid succession as they are all relevant to introducing myself to those reading my blog.
    In my little world, and I do believe it is little, I see many things crumbling around me and there is nothing that I can do to prevent them from completely crumbling to the ground. As much as I hate to say this, I believe that it is from one single choice I made that put all of this into motion. I do not regret the decision I made because I believe the decision was the right decision to make and I believe that my children have benefited from it as well but I do believe that the decision did set into motion the financial devastation my family is facing at this moment.
    Almost four years ago, now, my husband's and my third child was born, a daughter. Her name is Keira and with her birth came a roller coaster which we have never gotten off of. Most every major decision we have had to make over the last for years, in some way, related to Keira's birth. See our daughter was born with a rare genetic syndrome called Nager's Syndrome. The symptoms of the syndrome are too numerous to list (and I am saving that topic for a later date) but as for Keira the main cause of concern with her has been the micrognathia of the lower jaw, as well as ankylosis of the jaw. In layman's terms, Keira was born with an underdeveloped lower jaw, as well as fusion of the jaw, which has hindered her ability to speak, eat, breath, and drink. At just over twenty-four hours old, Keira was taken in for her first surgery to have a tracheostomy done; a week later she was back in surgery to have a feeding tube put in. It is because of her medical needs I made the decision that I believe set us on the roller coaster we are on now.
    I never hesitated or waivered in my thoughts of Keira. When they told us our daughter would be born with some birth defects, they gave us options. When I say 'options' I mean they told us we had two weeks to decided if we wanted to abort her. They told us that most in our situation do; well we are not most people I guess because aborting her was never an option in either mine or my husband's opinion, she was our daughter. And so we digested the fact that our daughter would be born with some physical deformities and we came to terms with the fact that she would need some medical care. Then the time came for her birth, as with it all we took things in strides. The doctors examined her, she stayed in the NICU, and we discussed treatment options, options that would give her the most normal life possible. It was while she was in the hospital, my husband and I started to realize that even with nursing care that would be provided, one of us was going to have to stay home. Some people are better at handling medical issue than others are. I seem to be the one that can handle it better than my husband can. So I was the one who was trained on how to do all of Keira's medical care and I was the one that got to stay home.
    I have never regretted leaving my job to take care of my two boys, my daughter, and her medical needs. It was the right decision to make at the time but sometimes I can't help but feel I am getting punished by making that decision. In life we all sacrifice something and for us it was our financial stability. You weigh all the options carefully before you make a decision and that is what we did. We looked at the long term effect and knew that it was going to be rough but we thought we had made the right decision. For the most part we have did make the right decision but there have been setbacks along the way; it is those setbacks that I find myself today trying to deal with. You know the old saying you can't put a band-aid on a leak and hope it will hold. Well, I guess you could say, that is what we did with several things. We tried to do a quick band-aid fix to many of our financial problems and hoped that it would fix them but they continued to leak and now we are flooded.
    Not too long ago our daughter went in for her eighth surgery. Can you imagine being almost four years old and already you have had to endure eight surgeries? Well my daughter has and she is a trooper like none other. Kids are resilient that way. It is hard enough to deal with having your daughter go into surgery, twice in a three month period, but when you add a bankruptcy, paternity results of a child you have been looking for for nearly ten years, college finals, and bills you don't have the money to keep up with, well as the saying goes….something has got to give.
    Something did give and everything seemed to come crumbling down around us. My daughter's surgery I can handle, the betrayed look on her face as I send her into surgery, I can't but I am doing what is best for her and I tell myself in the end she will have a better life for it. The paternity results I can handle as well. My husband has a son from a previous relationship that we have been searching for in December of 2009 we found him. We had been searching for him because my husband wanted to know if the boy was truly his son. When we finally found him, the mother unleashed years of anger on my husband without giving him one ounce of credence, and then decided to file for child support. She wants my husband's money but is unwilling to allow my husband any visitation or custody of the child….can you see where this is going? So we have found a lawyer who can help us file but we don't have the money to move forward. I can handle all of that but what I can't handle is how it will affect the little bit of money we have due have. All we wanted her to do was to wait just a little bit so that we could take care of what we had going on here. Our daughter's surgery, our bankruptcy….but years of anger trumped our careful planning.
    Now on to the bankruptcy. When I agreed to file for bankruptcy, well to be honest, I didn't know what to think. I hate to say it but the lawyer we picked is not very organized and half the time can't even remember that he has talked to us but we had already paid him the money. We spent two months getting on to him about filing it then when we are down to the wire and we really don't have much money, he files and then drops a bomb on us and tells us we need to come up with $1695 by the end of May….three weeks, we have three weeks to come up with the money….HOW IN THE HELL AM I SUPPOSE TO DO THAT???????? We are filing bankruptcy, hence we don't have the money to pay that, besides he told us we wouldn't have to start paying until after we had gone to court….now we find out different. I felt stupid, I felt small, I hurt from the worry and strain this is putting on us. I can play a blame game all day long but in the end it was the band-aids we put on the leaks that left us standing in water we can't tread.
    So this is where we stand as of this moment. We have gotten past the healing from surgery, we have finished our college finals, we are trying to desperately come up with money to pay our lawyer in the paternity and custody case, and we have a bankruptcy case that will fall through because we can't make $1695 month payments. On a side note, if the bankruptcy does fall through it could mean we will lose our house. I can face losing the house and how I will look in everyone's eyes for it but I can't face my children if I have to tell them we will be moving because we lost our home.
    So now you know why I am so stressed. I try and look at it as there are others out there that have much more to cope with then me but man this is hard. I have only myself to blame. I think back to when I worked full time and wonder if we would be where we were if I hadn't left my job? My daughter is so much more important than a job but a job helps to keep us financially sound and I am so tired of being on rocky ground, my body aches from it. And for those of you out there that are asking why I don't get a job, well I have no one I can trust to take care of my daughter during the day. It is not like I can pull someone off the street and say "Hey babysit my kid….and oh yeah you have to learn how to suction, change a trach, change a g-tube, how to clean around a g-tube and trach, how to do feedings through a g-tube! Oh and I can't pay you very much." Like that will happen, right? When it comes to medical issues, I have found that unless you employ someone who has some sort of a medical background, no one wants to take care of her because they are too scared of the possibilities of what could happen should she not get the care she needed properly.
    Anymore I don't know what to expect of things. I have my hopes and my dreams, simple things, nothing grand but those hopes and dreams, no matter how simple, are out of my grasp. This is my last hope, my last effort to contribute and make right the wrongs, I hope that someone will come across this blog, that just the right person who can take pity on me because right now accepting the pity of someone, anyone, is the only hope I have to bring my family out of the lonely hole I feel we are in.