The Scoop

Before I even get into this, I plan for this to be a REALLY long blog. I want to talk about everything that's happened the past week and I know it's going to take a lot of explanation.

So here it goes

Starting Thursday of last week:
Amanda and Robbie got here to start my birthday celebration. It was absolutely amazing having them here. I love my friends. I hadn't seen Amanda in so long, and I always like hanging out with Robbie. It's nice to get away from Chiefland with them every now and then. We went out to eat a lot, watched movies, and goofed off. Friday we saw Your Highness. It was what I expect from a movie with those actors in it. At midnight when I turned 21, we went to the store and got stuff for drinks. I had been stocking up on soda and snacks for so long it wasn't even funny. I had almost every soda imaginable but we only ended up buying rum and vodka. We didn't even open the rum though lol. I had like four drinks and that was way more than what I needed. I never drink, so everything hit me hard.

I got sick later in the night. It was nice to have Robbie there. Everyone was kind of laughing at me, which, looking back, I would have laughed too, but he was taking care of me while I cried about throwing up lol I was really emotional the whole night. I think I should take baby steps for the next time I drink more than one. For the rest of my birthday we just hung out. Got IHOP when we all finally woke up. We didn't drink again after that.

So, Sunday I got some bad news. Let me give you some back story first. My mom has had glaucoma for a while. Glaucoma is when the pressure in your eyes fluctuates a lot and it gets to be too high. I can't remember when she found out, but I know for a while she was taking eye drops for it. Her vision has been really bad lately and she had been meaning to set up another appointment to see what's up. My mom waited to tell me until after my birthday, but she found out that she is now blind in her left eye and her right eye is almost blind. The pressure in her eyes was really high again too. The specialist told her she isn't going to be able to drive anymore and that they have to report it to motor vehicle so her license is taken.

I can't imagine how my mom held it in for so many days that she was blind in one eye, and almost blind in the other. That alone is life changing. Also, my mom works in Gainesville. Do you know how little you can do living in the country without the ability to drive? This made a million questions come up. How will the mortgage get paid for? How will ANYTHING get paid for? My mom is 55. She still has SEVERAL years to live. Not driving from now on is a huge impact. I was really emotional when I found out. I was scared for my mom. I felt like she didn't have adequate support in the trauma that just occurred. Now she had all this financial burden getting in the way of her coping. She has a lot of things she has to go over with her doctor.

My mom doesn't know if she qualifies for disability. You think being blind in one eye and about to be blind in the other makes you qualify. It doesn't. You vision has to be at a specific level and my mom forgot to ask her level in the chaos of finding out. Disability, however, is not enough to pay our mortgage, let alone any other bill. It's not even like my mom can get a job close to home. NOTHING is close in Trenton. And nothing in Trenton pays what UF offers her. My mom isn't a candidate for any type of eye surgery either. They told her because her left eye is already blind, that there isn't any hope for it now. The pressure in her right eye from the glaucoma is still too high as well. She's on drops again, but because of this, they are unable to even think about performing any type of surgery on that eye. They also told her that even if the pressure was low enough for surgery, the procedure itself might stress her right eye out so badly that it could make itself go blind.

They told my mom that she'd probably be blind in both eyes by the age of 60. Can you imagine that? Five years from now, you can't see anything for the rest of your life. You lived so long taking advantage of this sense. Building your world on it, and then it's taken from you. What if my mom lived to be 90? That's another thirty years of being without vision. Some things you might not have thought of too are services for the blind. Do you know how hard it is to get a seeing eye dog? Or find an agency that can teach you braille? It's hard. And guess what? If she found the services, they'd be far away, and how does someone get to those agencies not being able to drive?

My sister and her family are not well off and haven't been for so long. They can't offer much help, maybe a ride or two. My dad is already on disability and hasn't worked as long as I can remember. He's dealing with his own illness. I'm a student with debt. We all are in no position to be able to help and it sucks so badly. My mom's best chance right now is to sell our house and move into a city. Some place she can walk to things, or a job. But the market is awful and you have to ask yourself how long will it be before she can't perform routine activities? It's really scary. There's also the selfish thoughts like will my mom see my graduation? My wedding? My kids? My niece and nephew grow up?


There's still so many questions about the whole situation. I'll blog about it as I know more. Pray hard though because this situation sucks. Why my mom? Why?




::Sigh::


UCF should be contacting me soon about whether I got offered a spot since I was on the alternate list. I don't know what I want anymore. If I get accepted, I'm obviously going to try to go, but I'm scared for the future financially now. I got really used to the idea of taking a year off. I feel like things are happening for a reason right now. Maybe I'm not meant to go to graduate school right now....


Maybe...