After almost 5.5 years of anxiety and stress regarding my disease and our financial situation I have finally made a both saddening and exciting decision...... I'm getting a job. Yes, folks, I have been hired for a real bonafide job with a paycheck as a freelance writer for The VT Journal. I've spent too much time crying and stressing if I should have or could afford spending that $5 on a sweater from the thrift store. I was crying and praying to God, again, about the desperation I felt regarding my inability to provide for my family when the newspaper flipped open to an eye-popping classified ad looking for a writer in the Claremont area. I sent off a quick email, was sent on an article "interview" and viola, Hallowesta Celebrates its Thirteenth Anniversary is hitting the front page with pics. With receiving SSDI, I'm allowed to make up to $1200 monthly; however, I've never been healthy enough to commit to anything. I can't work out of the house. I can't exert much energy. I'll never make $1200 monthly, but I also once told myself I'd never be able to work anymore, anywhere, ever again. I guess you never know what may happen. Luckily, I love writing, and I'm finally healthy enough to feel I can commit to a job, or commit to anything that will re occur in the future. I can probably submit two stories a week. The price I'm getting isn't what I'd hoped for, but it's something. It's stability. We so desperately need stability. Winter is coming soon. We need a $300 storm door so we no longer can view the outside from our hallway. We need thermal shades to regulate heat with no strings, because I have managed to break all the cheap ones before. We can't get those things to eat and stay warm while I pay $250+ every three weeks going to New York. So the goodnews is I'm healthy enough to try working at something I love. The sad part is that living with cancer may be survivable, but we can't survive financially fighting cancer. No one can.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Baldies' Blog began originally in the UK by a 26 year old journalist with a blood cancer on a mission to inform the world about bone marrow donation.
He has since died, and I took on the cause of making cancer care more transparent for everybody.
Cancer is a disease that will touch everybody through diagnosis or affiliation: 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed and 1 in 3 woman will hear those words, "You Have Cancer."
I invite you to read how I feel along my journey and
how I am continuing to live a full life alongside my Hodgkin's lymphoma, with me controlling my cancer, not my cancer controlling me.
I hope that "Baldies' Blog" will prepare you to handle whatever life sends you, but especially if it's the message, "You Have Cancer."
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