To my kind and caring friends here on the GOS: I'm still recuperating from a painful bout of pleurisy (an inflammation of the lining of the lung, a common complication of the more severe forms of rheumatoid arthritis), but I didn't want to wait any longer to say thank you.
I simply can't begin to thank you enough for your kindness and generous support. In June it will be one year since I was diagnosed with RA and had to leave my job and go on temporary state disability--a leave-taking that resulted in a cascade of negative events and mental health-mangling financial woes. My state temporary disability benefits were terminated in November of last year, and yet I couldn't go back to work--in point of fact there were days I could barely walk. I was in terrible trouble, the worst I'd ever known.
In the midst my physical decline, I want to mention that in February of this year I also came within a hair's breadth of losing my house, but thanks to the good advices of many knowledgeable kospeeps, that nightmare was averted, and I remain in my home for now.
I have applied federal disability, have jumped through all their hoops, and now I await word from the SSA, yea or nay. I should have a definitive answer in about a month. Cross fingers. For more on my efforts to gain approval for SSDI, check out this diary by belinda ridgewood, without whose sterling writing and editorial skills, I would be straight out of luck.
Throughout it all, you have rallied around me time and time again; you have held me up, held my very life up and kept it from crashing into fathomless disaster. And so today I want to say a hearty thank you to everyone who donated to my cause. To those of you who sent donations via gofundme or PayPal, or who elected to send a gift from my wishlist, or who gave my various fundraising efforts a tip and a rec, to all of you I am humbly and wholly grateful.
The God's truth is, if you hadn't volunteered to help when I had no means of helping myself, I don't know where the furbutts and I would be today. It's unlikely we'd all still be together, safe and warm, under the same roof. Had we been been scattered to the four winds last November when I was so very sick and hadn't a dime to my name, I doubt that I would have the mental and emotional wherewithal to plot a happy, healthy, forward course for us now. And so for helping me to maintain my faculties--for refusing to allow me to break--for this, I thank you most of all.
Extra special thanks to belinda ridgewood, Betsrutan, basket, Ekaterin, noweasels, glescagal, and Geema0712.