Word of My Demise - Haiku - Sorry I've Been Silent So Long

Word of my demise
exaggerated, and at
most, inaccurate

2020-03-20-210504 - Cori and Bear at the Firepit.jpg

To say I've been gone far too long is an understatement, and part of the reason was our loss of my beloved Bear, pictured in the photo above. He was my friend, my furkid, my love, and my familiar, and one of the wisest old souls I've ever known, even when he was a kitten.

We lost him a year ago on 12 May. I will miss him always.

And, fittingly in a way, I am writing this - my reintroduction to this awesome Hive community - on the birthday of one of my closest friends, whom we lost twenty years ago last March. He and Bear would undoubtedly have been fast friends.

Bear's loss was a blow, even though I knew it was coming, and was and remain grateful that I had him in my life for over sixteen years.

But although Marek and others complimented me on how well I was handling his loss, I was in reality settling into the downward slide of depression, which as those who've been there know, make it not only difficult to reach out to others, but even to function well on a daily basis.

And so, I all but ceased to write, pretty much with the exception of grocery lists, and entirely inconsequential social media posts.

Then, as the year wore on, Marek's health began declining, so when he came home for Christmas, he took off an additional three weeks to give himself time to really recover.

Except that he didn't.

We drove up to see his dad in New York, and by the time we got home, rather than feeling better, as had always been the case before, he was getting progressively worse.

When the time came for him to go back to work, he was unable to, and finally returning home from the store one day, he overbalanced on his way up the three steps to our front door, and fell. Hard.

The short version is that he spent the next SIX MONTHS being transferred between four different hospitals, during which time we had zero income, I was traveling from home almost daily to spend as much time as possible with him; first to Cookeville, half an hour to our north, and for the next three months to Chattanooga, over an hour and a half to our south.

Just the life flight from Cookeville Regional Medical Center down to Erlanger Baroness Hospital was over $69,000.

And that doesn't count the DOZENS of x-rays, MRIs, CT Scans, Ultrasounds, and other medical tests and treatments that he received over the course of his stay.

Meanwhile, I was ridiculously overstressed, not sleeping, barely eating, and my health started spiraling downward as well.

At this point, he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which the doctors admitted is a placeholder diagnosis, as there are over 100 syndromes which fit his general set of symptoms; while I now have a diagnosis of advanced Rheumatoid Arthritis, clearly stress induced, which I am determined to beat as naturally as possible.