month of months...

its been a month of months.

a couple of weeks ago, I received a call from the debt collectors. My dad has a $55000 credit card debt that went into default because the credit card company hadn't received any payments since June of last year. I can't really share any details about that since it's not resolved and the internet is like an open book. I'm dealing with debt collectors and they're really really good at making this difficult, I guess I'm not making it easy either. But I don't really know what the hell I'm doing. I just need to preserve what's left of our assets since that's what's keeping my dad in boarding care and day care.

Here's a little tutorial on how debt works. If you haven't paid your credit card bill in a while, it goes into default after which the credit card company will contract out a debt collection agency to call you and try to get as much money as they can from you. Typically, the client pays 10-30% of the total debt. If they can't get payment, the debt gets sold off to another collection agency, then another, and another. This supposedly goes on for a while. If they think they can't get money from you and also other factors I don't know of, they'll sell it to a law firm who specializes in getting money out of people. The law firm will then sue you for the debt. But, the burden of proving that you, the client actually racked up those charges is on the law firm. That means that they'll have to follow the paper trail of debt collectors back to the original bank and pull records and try to prove that every charge on there was made by you. This is a civil suit. If they win and there is a judgement against you, they can garnish your wages, confiscate your assets etc.

It's very scary. I'm still dealing with this right now, it's not over and it will take a while to resolve I think.

Additionally, my brother has an addiction problem. I've been trying to talk him into getting some help because he needs to, if not he can ruin his life and he won't be happy. I don't really know what I'm doing though. I'm talking to the school psychiatrist this week to ask for guidance. I want him to seek help and be able to stick with the program or therapy or whatever else it turns out to be.

Last week, my aunt collapsed. She has a patent foramen ovale, which means that there is a hole between her right and left hearts. Your heart is 2 pumps. The right side, pumps blood coming back from your body to be reoxygenated in your lungs. The left side, pumps blood coming back from your lungs to your body. When you're still in the womb, your lungs aren't fully developed and there is no oxygen to breathe anyway, you're bathed in amniotic fluid. So blood needs to bypass the lungs and there are two shunts; the first is within the heart itself, shunting blood from the right to the left; the second is a duct that connects the artery leading from the right heart to the lungs (pulmonary artery) and the left heart to the body (aorta). My aunt has a hole in the first shunt, the foramen ovale. This is supposed to close completely after birth, but in some cases it doesn't. People can live their entire lives without having symptoms, but I guess she was stressed enough that cardiac output decreased and she didn't get enough blood to her brain (this is my guess, I don't really know the exact details of her collapse).

She was worked up and the hole was small so the surgeons are not going to close it. The checked her out and everything seems good. A blessing in this month of months.

Last friday, my uncle died. He is the husband of my dad's sister. They live in Maryland. I don't know him very well, but I'm close with my aunt. He has diabetes, same as my dad. He suffered a stroke before same as my dad, he's the same age as my dad. The only difference is that he's in much worse health. It's been a tough weekend for me. I'm grieving much more than I expected. I'm also scared for my dad.

A few weeks ago, we found out that he had some blood in his stool, a positive fecal occult blood test. It means that there is bleeding somewhere in his GI tract, anywhere from the mouth to the anus. He was referred to the gastroenterologist for a colonoscopy. He ran some blood test to prepare for the colonoscopy. My dad has some anemia, there were abnormalities in his iron values. The doctor came up with a diagnosis of anemia of chronic disease. Chronic disease could mean a great many things. From kidney disease, colitis (inflammation of your colon), tumor, autoimmune stuff, anything that is chronic really. What happens is the chronic inflammatory process releases some molecules into your blood that makes your cells retain its iron stores so that your bone marrow can't use it to make new red blood cells. That's how you get anemia.

The anemia is an indication for an upper endoscopy, which is like sending a camera down your throat into your stomach, looking at structures along the way. The colonoscopy covers the other end. March 3rd is the big date. I don't know what to expect. I spent the day today learning about anemia of chronic disease. I still don't know what to expect. I just pray it's not bad news.

I felt like i had to document this here. I'm just not dealing with this very well. I was really feeling like I wouldn't be able to take anymore. I felt that after my aunt collapsed that there would be more to come and there was. I just don't want to make any prediction that will come true later. I'm a mess. Talking about it with friends helps, talking about it here helps more. I want to be able to remember this moment and come back here and know the details of what happened and see that this is a pretty bad time and my family and i got through it. Maybe it's a little messed up to want to remember the bad stuff, but i can't appreciate the good stuff without the bad.