jestawoman
Feb 5, 2009
Feb 5, 2009
Feb 5, 2009
Feb 5, 2009
Feb 5, 2009
Dec 29, 2008
Dec 28, 2008
All the aid in the world does no good unless it is accepted and put to use. Folks need to write the info you give them down, and make those calls, visit the places you direct them to! I look forward to the time when I can spend more time here and share the things I have learned with those who it may benefit. Your service is valuable Marigold, I commend you! 
Dec 24, 2008
This is me and my mom, taken on mom's 65th birthday 2 years ago in 2006. She had just had a pacemaker put in. Two months prior mom lost her little brother, whom she was very close too. She had already lost both her parent's and a baby boy. Three weeks after this photo was taken, her second born daughter, my little sister, died. Three days later she found out that her youngest son, my brother Troy, had not an ear infection, but rather a rare throat cancer. For the next year the two of them went through pure hell. Troy's cancer treatment was aggressive. His radiation treatments every single day were of the highest dose legally given. He lives with her. She nursed him through and drove him every day to the hospital for his treatments. Troy is only 41 years old. Immediately, within a couple weeks of Troy being diagnosed clear of the cancer, (he also suffers radiation poisoning, which takes up to two years to get over) mom found out she had malignant breast cancer! She underwent treatment. It only begins to get bad here! Immediately after completing her treatment, Troy's cancer returned! He went through treatment again and had 73 lymph nodes removed and they removed the whole left side of his neck from occipital to collar bone. Troy has two children with his ex wife who is the daughter of my mom's husband. Then mom's cancer returned! It has spread to her middle chest. She is already disabled from degenerative arthritis in her hips and back. She is currently undergoing chemo again. Now it gets even uglier....On Nov. 7, 2008 I got a phone call from Troy begging me to come to see him. He said his daughter had been raped and that he was worried about mom. Come to find out his daughter, 13, had been persuaded by her best friend to reveal that her grandfather, her mother's father and the husband of MY mother, had raped her from the time she was 5 years old until a year and a half ago when she started menstruation! After some careful planning my brother and I were able to get mom out of her own home that night. There were loaded guns there and mom's husband suspected what was going on. For three days he drifted around the county before being arrested and shortly after he confessed. He is 78 years old. From the moment we learned of this, including the moment I arrived at mom's house, standing over her as she sat, bald in her robe with a lap full of prescription bottles...telling her she had to get up and leave her home at 9:00 at night to be taken to a friends house...no time to gather her things...she looked up at me once realizing I was serious, I'll NEVER forget the suprised and scared look on her face, and said "why, is somebody coming here?" From that moment on there have been many events and there are still many. The main victim of this crime, my brothers daughter, is by appearances OK. She is safe, she is loved and we are all here to support her. The other victims, there are many, but mainly my mother and my brother are suffering more than you can imagine! I have moved from my family to mom's to be there for them and to help care for her and drive her to her appointments. Her husband had always done that. Everyone, proffessionally and personally that knows this man is totally shocked. No one can believe it. AND THEN, to our horror, last week Troy was told his cancer is back in the same place and they are concerned it has spread to his brain! Both he and mom suffer post traumatic stress syndrome symptoms from the night their world turned upside down, not to mention this horrible cancer that is stalking them. It is heartbreaking. Troy works for the school district all week doing things that are too physically demanding for him and in pain 100% of the time. He has'nt been able to get disability, even after they cut off half his neck, or after pronouncing him poisoned from the radiation. Mom's husband paid all the bills out of his social security and the money my brother gave them to live there. Mom only gets $460 a month of her own. Her husbands income stopped when he went to jail, which is where he will die. The mortgage on their cute little place in a manufactured home park is only $32 thousand, but none of us has any savings or funds to help her. I have been in communication with the mortgage company, they have paid one of her payments. But they make it clear that if payments stop, foreclosure begins. There is no way mom could survive having to move any time soon. I am worried, as are her doctor's that she may not make it through this. I have signed her up for food stamps, utility assistance. I have not been able to get an attorney to agree to represent her in our battle with social security to exchange her $460 for her husbands $1400. There is a provision for her to recieve it in the program for prisoner's benefits in social security. I will be going there in person myself to apply. I'll be armed with a form signed by mom giving me permission to represent her and I have all pertinent paper work. Another complication is that it is only mom's husband's name on the mortgage contract. She really has no rights unless he dies. Can you believe, NO ONE from the DA's office or the police or anybody has ever contacted my mom!!?? One minute she is frail and sick, but seemingly safe and secure in her room seated in her favorite tattered chair with a lap full of meds and no hair - and the next minute she has learned of her grandaughters lost innocence, she has lost her husband and essentially the whole last 30 years of her life lost it's meaning. All while scared to death her youngest child could lose his life at only 41 to cancer, and all while fighting valiantly for her own life. If you could hear my soul screaming right now you would cover your ears and cringe! 