Okay  so where are we? 

Its Tuesday 17^th March st Patrick’s day. 

I am not normally going to blog this out so fast but I am aware that I left on a sad note because of the death of Mother, and I didn’t want to leave it on a sad note as I am not sad anymore.  Her death is another reality I have come to terms with.  Plus, I am going to hospital first thing in the morning and I don’t know if they will let me out and you can’t leave a blog on a sad note when you don’t know when you’re going to be coming back to it, now can you?   

This disease I have is autoimmune, meaning that you own cells turn on your bile duct cells leading to damage which causes a back up in the liver, which in turn causes cirrhosis. As the cirrhosis takes hold the liver will eventually be unable to carry out normal function leaving you on the liver transplant list or laid out on a slab.  However, the process is slow and many patients die of complications of the disease before the cirrhosis gets going.  One of the complications is liver duct cancer, quite a common complication since the autoimmune process causes a change in the bile duct DNA, so they provide regular screening for this.  Another thing that I read was that the mean life expectancy without a liver transplant is 7.5 years after jaundice is first apparent.  The third and last thing that I read before I stained my little panties was stones in the ducts caused by the resulting slow moving bile sludge, which causes biliary colic.  That did me I had read enough.  Blimey there I am trying to lighten up the mood a little bit and I have just given myself such a beautiful future, eh?  I am not upset about it though, I can’t change what’s in the future, I don’t want to be a misery guts. The truth is everyone’s life has to come to an end eventually; I don’t want to spend that life worrying about it.  I cannot say since the diagnosis that I haven’t thought about dying because I have, its not filled me with fear or anything, its just made me feel calmer, like little things do not matter anymore and I just want to leave a smiley face memory and happy times behind for my kids not a misery guts moaning about an illness.  I don’t want to be remembered as a purple face or an ugly spiteful ears. I am sure they can sort out the pain and the problems causing it, I know it cant be that bad because I checked in the mirror this morning I am still pink, not yellow, I do this every morning now, its become a habit and the first thing I do when I wake is grab the mirror and check what colour I am, so far so good.   

I was up mega early this morning, being in
Manchester last week with my baby munchkin, going out all weekend with the family and the children, my house is a shite hole, the ironing pile is so big I have had people offering to climb it for charity.  Plus, my sister rang yesterday asking if I fancied meeting her in my town for lunch.  She is going on a cruise soon and wants to get bits and pieces.  Reasoning that the house will still be here when I get back or even tomorrow I went.  So today I have to get on sort it all out and crack the whip to myself.  It’s funny but when I got home yesterday I made myself a list of things I was going to do before bedtime.  Since I had some pain that was kind of getting right up my nose I thought, I will take some of my pain stuff.  That was around 8 ish and by then I had done the dishwasher tidied up my room, put some washing in for the following morning and got yesterdays washing in and folded.  40 mins later I had to go to bed, the list got sacked.  This stuff does not mess about and puts you right to sleep.  I woke mega early and thought great I can get everything done today then.  I had a beautiful bouquet of flowers delivered on Saturday, it was beautiful then but it’s magnificent now that all the lilies have opened out.  It was from my Mum in law, for all the work I did for the funeral. 

Mind you having said all that about the house being still here that’s debateable, it’s falling down; the subsidence that they ‘sorted out’ before we moved in isn’t exactly what I would put in the sorted out box.  That’s another ongoing story I shall talk about another time.  I did email then with my concerns and promised to follow it up with a letter, another job for today.  I got a call yesterday from a girl, who obviously hadn’t read the email and was told to phone up anyway, hadn’t got a clue what the actual content of the email said and started to gable on about crap.  So I told her to go back, read the email properly and then phone back.  She didn’t.  Surprise,  surprise 

Back to my debt story now then, you lovely people you, oh and by the way, thanks to all who left comments.  Especially nice ones. 

So Mother died at the end of the year, we had the funeral and I cancelled my BR appointment on my brother’s instructions.  He said he would meet with me and talk about a way forward at the end of February.   With all the stress he had gone through, the journeys to and from here and
London, plus his high flying job, he needed a break.  He buggered off to the
Caribbean for a month. (alright for some, eh?)  Meanwhile, my sisters and cleared out mums personal stuff.  

I had spoken to the money advisor and she said we might be able to clear the debts with my inheritance money I was getting from the sale of the house etc.   I didn’t want to sell Mums house, that place was a sanctuary to me, my brother in law wanted to buy it and rent it out.   There were lots of talks, here there and everywhere about what was and what was not going to happen.  Mums house had those beam things, it was like a cottage.  They were saying that these beams needed to come out, the dining room needed to be repainted, decking sorted in the garden.  The whole thing seemed to get out of hand without anyone agreeing with anyone.   I didn’t get involved with all of this; I was too busy battling with creditors to care.  Mums’ house was neutral colours, the garden was always kept lovely and I couldn’t see the point of changing it beyond all recognition before putting it on the market.  I kind of knew we had to sell it but this was just another reality that I couldn’t face at this time.  If I am totally honest I was bitterly disappointed that I couldn’t  just go BR and get the debt pressure off my shoulders, which would have happened if my Mum would have just lived another two weeks.  I was quite annoyed with Mum for leaving like that, I know it sounds crazy and selfish but I just couldn’t deal with the creditors after I had written to them all to tell them I was going BR on 4^th Jan and then I flippin didn’t do it.  They came for me once again with an even worse attitude. Like, you’re a pauper, pay us you slime ball and don’t even think you have the right to breathe if you can’t give us money right now. 

At a meeting with my family, just before my brother came back I was asked what my opinion was.  So I told them, I said I think the brother in laws should mind their own. This was our mother, it was her house and that house had been passed to her children not them.   Even the will stated that if any one of Mums children died, the estate should pass between those remaining alive after her death. If the house didn’t sell in its present state then that’s the time to think again, doing months of work was only going to prolong the agony for the rest of us.  I didn’t think it the right thing to do to start ripping her house to shreds and making major changes.  Mum had just had a brand new kitchen and bathroom and radiators fitted.  The dining room was the only room that needed painting to bring the whole thing together.  If we kept on top of the gardens I could see no point in delaying the inevitable.  The house may even become a problem in the summer if we waited months to put it up for sale, there was always the chance of someone breaking in, insects getting in there and obviously the gardens would need weekly maintenance.  Eventually I got my way; we cleared out the house and put it up for sale.  Even though I didn’t want it to go, once the house was emptied of furniture and all traces of her living and her life there had gone, it was just a house.  We didn’t have a board put up though; we just had it in the paper and estate agents.  I loved going to Mums before we cleared it out, I would lie on her bed, smell her there.  The estate agents took pictures before the house was cleared of furniture, I downloaded the photos and enlarged them until they were pixels, just to see if I could see any sign of her in them, I guess I hoped to see her face, some trace of her, I didn’t though.   

When my brother came back he offered to give me some money to pay the debts off, he said to write to the creditors, make offers for a final settlement and he would pay them for me.  The money advisor didn’t think this a good idea; she said that it would be better to go on a DMP until the estate was settled.  I didn’t quite know who to listen to. I agreed to the DMP as a means of getting the creditors off my back, that’s really what I wanted, some relief from the onslaught of creditors.   

I had made some friends on the forum, just after I started posting in September 2006, Skippy joined, the forum didn’t have that many members at that time.  I really liked skippy, she was kind and always there when I was down about things.   Kerri and Aguise joined just after and we used to talk on and off board, I don’t think I would have got through half of what I did if it hadn’t been for their help. 

I went back to the doctors too, I told of my fatigue etc, they said hang on in there, you have been through a lot in your life and it’s not surprising you’re feeling a bit low at this time.  They gave me more anti depressant pills and started to arrange some counselling for me.

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