I Need Heat!

I detest asking for any kind of help when it's for personal reasons, but I don't have a choice.  With my health conditions, going outside in the winter is hard enough on me, let alone living in a cold house, without a working furnace.

A couple weeks ago I went to bed with the furnace working fine.  The next morning when I woke up, it was chilly in the house.  I turned up the heat to take the chill off, and nothing happened.  I then realized something was wrong with the furnace.  

I have a friend that lives in another state and her husband owns a HVAC shop.  Her husband called me, and tried to walk me through some steps to see if he could figure out what the problem was.  He deducted that it wasn't something simple and said I'd have to have a technician come look at it.

After posting on a local garage sale site, a certified technician said that he'd repair it for me, just for the cost of parts.  He finally was able to come look at it this past Monday.  It turns out that I need a new inducer motor, control board, and something with my vent for the poisonious gases.  He looked up the price of the parts in front of me, and they're around $900  ...and I do believe that was before taxes.  He said a brand new furnace would run about $2000.  

To say this made me physically sick, is an understatement.  I'm disabled due to chronic neuroimmune health conditions and I live off of $721 a month.  That barely runs my household and buys food.  It's impossible for me to come up with the money on my own.

I contacted our community agencies and there's only one program that could help me out, but I don't qualify because you have to have insurance on your home.  I bought this house at sheriff sale and due to the number of years it sat empty without insurance, plus it's age, the cheapest home insurance quote I could find, was $387 a month.  No way in the world I could afford that, so the house isn't insured.  

I'm using an electric space heater, which scares me to death that it will cause a fire, and an electric blanket.  The heater is keeping it about 56 degrees in here right now, and we have colder weather that moved in today.  Next Tuesday on my birthday, November 18th, the high is only going to be in the 20's.  I live in NW Ohio, and it get's cold here!  

If I can get the money to repair the furnace, I'll do that.  If donations exceed the repair and are enough to replace my old furnace, I'll replace it.  If there's anything beyond that, I'll fix the hole in the roof in my back room, that's letting cold air pour in through it.  

Please help me spread my campaign by sharing it across your social media networks. You can click HERE to view or donate to this campaign.  Thanks so much!

The Common Cold

The phrase "The common cold" actually makes me chuckle right now.  Common?  Not with me.  I never have anything common wrong with me.  Even something as simple as a "common cold" is not so simple.  My daughter had a cold and yeah, she complained a little about her nose being stuffy/runny and a sore throat, but that was it.  She had it a couple days, it ran it's course, and now she's all better.  I, on the other hand, am now sick.  Not just stuffy or runny.  Down right time-to-consider-going-to-the-ER-to-get-a-breathing-treatment-sick.  My nose IS stuffy and runny, my head hurts, but the most frustrating is the constant 100% of the time wheezing.  Then the coughing that the wheezing causes.  Then the dizziness that coughing brings on.  Then, I start back at the beginning to make the circle again.  On a positive note though, I do not have a sore throat like my daughter did. Lucky me!  =)

Just about every day I feel like I have the flu on some level.  The muscle aches, the fatigue, the joint pain.  Tonight, if I didn't know better, I'd swear I have the flu.  My front thigh muscles are absolutely pulsing and screaming in pain.  My arms feel like they're both weighted down. I've had the flu shot though, and I don't think I'm running a fever.  I just seem to get everything 100 times worse then everyone else I know.  If someone gets a cold, I get bronchitis.  If someone gets bronchitis, I get pneumonia.  

I feel like all I do any more is complain and whine.  That makes me feel bad.  I know that I have to be incredibly annoying to those around me and to my friends online.  This isn't who or what I want to be.  I want to be happy, and laughing, and having fun.  Sometimes I don't think that I even remember what fun was for me.  Then, the memories come back, and I remember having fun.  I remember laughing and being with my friends.  I remember dancing, and doing silly things all in the name of fun.  I feel like I'm this fun-loving person, stuck inside the body of an old person.  I know that I'm not a "spring chicken".  -Oh how I'd love to go back to my 20's and relive my life.  There's so many things I'd do differently.  I'm also not a "old person" yet either though.  I'll be 42 next month.  There should be plenty of time left in my life for me to have fun.  To hang out with friends.  To fall in love and be loved by someone.  None of that will happen though, when I'm always in pain and complaining.   

Have you ever been in such constant annoying pain that you could seriously just scream at the top of your lungs?  Not from the pain being so sharp ...or not so horrible like labor pains, ..but pain so constant that after a week of it you're ready to just scream and lose your mind?  This is where I'm at tonight.  I can always handle pain like this for about a week straight, then I start losing it.  That's when the depression kicks in and I start questioning "why" I'm even still here on earth, if I'm going to have to live every day (or most days) in this kind of pain, and feeling alone, desperate, and isolated. If you "know" me at all through this blog, you know that I don't sugar coat anything.  The reason I don't sugar coat anything, is because I feel it's important for others reading this to know exactly and honestly, how I feel.  It's important to me, so that when someone else is feeling this way, they don't feel alone.  I know what kind of stigma depression carries in the communities.  I know that people who do suffer depression, sometimes feel embarrassed because of it.  If you are reading this and know what I mean, please don't ever feel like that again.  Your feelings are real, and they're valid.  You're not alone.  If people who "look down" upon those with depression had to live a day in our lives, they'd think much differently.  

As most of you know, I'm trying to break out into the public speaking and advocacy world.  Because of this, I've had some people tell me that maybe I shouldn't be so honest, ...that it may hurt me in my new career.  I still stand by what I've said to those people.  What I've said is this; those who read about me, or those who may come to a public speaking engagement that I may have, deserve no less then the truth.  Maybe I "am" going to be looked at in a different light because of my education and advocacy efforts, but if I can't be the real me, then I don't want to be anything at all.  The people who are going to listen to me speak, or read what I write, deserve no less then the truth.  If by being honest I help even one person to not feel alone, or I help one person who isn't sick realize what it's like to be trapped inside a sick body, then my being honest is worth it no matter what some others may think or say about me.

I don't have much to offer anyone, but what I do have plenty of is compassion, empathy, caring, concern, and a willingness to do anything I can, to help whoever I can.  This illness may have stolen my fun and my laughter, but it will never steal my heart.