Mine is unfortunately a sob story. 2015 has been utter hell for my husband and I. Our circumstances usually have ups and downs which is just a part of life. We love each other, have enough food, clothes, somewhere to sleep, jobs, and two cats who we love. However, 2015 has been mostly a downward slant on the graph with few minor ups.
In January I had a second surgery on both elbows for nerve blockage that wasn't helped by the first surgery. The day before my surgery, my husband was punched in the face by a co-worker so hard that two of his teeth were knocked out of place and his upper jaw was broken. It was over a week before workman's comp sent him to the dentist to start working on fixing it. Two weeks after the punch, he was fired because they partially blamed him for the altercation even though the tapes show he did not lift a finger to engage the guy nor did he egg him on. It was just a reason to fire him. He was out of a job for two months.
My recovery from surgery has not gone as well this time because I was not allowed enough time off work to recover. I had to go back to work a week early because my manager did not allow enough time to train my partner who had recently stepped up to help in my job. I had to come back to fix MAJOR mess ups and was two weeks behind. I had spent the month before I had my surgery cleaning things up so that they could stay on top of things while I was out. That didn't happen. I am still cleaning things up that my manager fucked up from those two weeks. My left elbow has hurt and given me issues almost from the surgery.
We then found out that my doctor was not in network for my insurance and we were lied to when I had called to check on that before the surgery. I was told the deductible was all we had to pay and that everything was fine insurance wise. And although I have called the doctor and the insurance company, there's nothing we can do but pay it as we can.
I had taken a semester off school (just started my last class for my Master's degree two weeks ago) in order to ensure that my recovery would not interfere with my online classes since there is so much typing to do in an online class. However, by the time my semester started nine weeks ago, there were other complications. My entire left pinky finger and half of my ring finger have been numb for over two months now with no relief at all. Usually with nerve blockage the numbness depends on the pressure put on it, so if you're leaning on your elbows it goes numb but when you get off them, the numbness goes away. Yeah, not for two months now.
In June, I also totaled our 2015 car we'd not yet had a year, leaving me in pain in my arms from tensing up to prepare for the crash, and leaving us $6000 owed on the car above what the insurance company's settlement was for. A couple of weeks ago, my uncle died, leaving my mom in a very fragile mental state because their sister had just died in October and she was not quite recovered from that. I'm now an only child because my younger brother died at 18 in 2004, which broke both of my parents mentally and permanently. So I had to stay strong for my mom with all this crap going on and my husband had to work the funeral day so he couldn't be there for me.
Tuesday, I found out that my left arm's issues are acting as though the nerve was cut. We've tried steroid/ cortisone pills and they did nothing so my only other option is a third freaking surgery to move the nerve again, this time under the muscle instead of under the skin, and hope that the nerve wasn't really cut just processing that way, and hope that this doesn't happen again. My right pinky's tip is numb, too, but it is not getting any worse and I'll deal with that until my left one is taken care of because it is getting worse.
We had to trade in my husband's van to get a new car because they made it seem as though we were $6000 upside down on it since we didn't have the car I'd wrecked. So now, we have to carpool to and from work and figure things out about transportation when we aren't going in the same general direction.
Any money that we would have used to try to get my husband a cheapo car to get him to and from work will have to be used to make up my time off work for recovering from my third elbow surgery because I have zero vacation or sick time at work to use for the recovery and that will be at least two weeks.
I hate sharing our sob story, but it does feel good to vent it all out because no one else listens or understands what all we've been through. We're tightening our belts and are determined to survive even the next thing that gets thrown at us.