demarcation of a year

I find myself drawing an imaginary line or maybe even a bookend to the last year. Not even just 2012, but from today back through February of last year. This time last year I was in the throws of not only planning my wedding but also moving to my current residence. We were escaping the daily harassment of our neighbors and their constant state of assholishness...I had reached a point where I could no longer take the sleepless nights as a result of the loud music, calling the police to no avail, and complaints to the property managers that fell on deaf ears.

So we moved. To a rental home. Even though it was a "downgrade" in quality (older home, things in various states of disrepair), it was a major upgrade in quality of life. For the first time since 2004 I finally was able to sleep through the night without the use of ear plugs and noise machines. It was bliss.

And then three weeks into the bliss...I started losing vision in my left eye over the course of three days. I had severe pains, and I kept dismissing it as a bad sinus infection. By the third day my vision in my left eye was virtually gone - I could only see if I looked straight ahead. Peripheral vision was completely gone. I made an appointment with my primary doctor, and they spent an hour hemming and hawing about what it was that I had (to include a discussion about Bell's Palsy because the left side of my face started to droop), and only when I started to cry did they stop talking about me and start talking to me. They sent me to the ER, where I had a panic attack after being kept in an exam room for 3 hours with no one coming in to check on me. I had a delightful experience with Xanax, and thought "Gosh, this is how normal people must feel all the time". I had an MRI and thought I was going to die being trapped in a machine that is an inch away from your face for over an hour. I was finally discharged at 1 in the morning, and ordered to stay home for the remainder of the week, with the exception of going to a neurologist, ophthalmologist, and going to a clinic that would administer steroid injections every day for 2 hours a piece. The injections made everything taste like metal. My neurologist told me that there was a 20% chance I could develop multiple sclerosis in the next two years, but there was still little research done on those with my condition - optic neuritis. They couldn't tell me how I had contracted the neuritis, so I had no what to know how to prevent it from happening again.

When I get stressed out, my eye still hurts. When it's really hot outside, my eye hurts and I get nauseous. But it's been a year since this all happened, and if that's all I've had to cope with as a change in my quality of my health, I'm counting my blessings. I still have another year to go before I'm officially out of the recovery phase, but given all that I've dealt with aside from this ordeal, I think I'm made of tougher stuff.

It's been a year and I'm still kicking.

Remarkable

Just taking a precious free moment to process my thoughts, and remark on my last week in my new position. It's been a whirlwind week, weird office hours, late nights, early mornings, and breathing through the chaos. But it's been exhilarating. Coming from the world of newborn adoptions, foster care is quite different. You look at the world through a much different lens. In my last job, it was a bit more of a rosier picture. Great, courageous women thinking ahead and making a plan for their child, choosing a family that will be parents and raise the child as their own. They each had their reasons, and had the where-with-all to acknowledge they weren't ready or able to be the kind of parent or family they want for their child.

Foster care...well, it's the dirty underbelly of child welfare. For example, the agency I now work for only accepts Level 2 or higher foster children - meaning, our foster parents are trained and ready to parent these kids in care who require therapeutic services. 85% of "our" kids have been sexually abused and have behavioral issues. These are the kids that smear poop on themselves or their surroundings, because it's a defense mechanism they've developed to make themselves "untouchable", even if for a short time. In the last week, I've had the distinct pleasure to meet some of these kids, including a 3 and 4 year old brother and sister just yesterday. They have their issues, for sure. But yesterday they were all about cracking jokes...and that is so, so remarkable to me.

Case worker: "what are you doing in there?"
Boy: "I'm still going potty, one more minute!"
Case worker: "Are you going number 1 or number 2?"
Boy: "Number three!"