Famous Nuclear Disasters

 

A fun thing to do with your wife who is going through radiation treatment is to name the red spots on her body after famous nuclear disasters.

#fuckcancer

 

 

 

11:04 am pdt

If we couldn't joke about it we never would have made it this far.

 

Things are going very well though, for once! The lesions are shrinking and there's been no new spread.

 

 11:09 am pdt

The bright red one in the middle is Chernobyl, and the lighter red around it is Pripyat

so as the red spot spreads it's like

 

 

Missy's Marvels - Help Support Wolfie T-Shirt

 Our friends Holly and Missy have created a t-shirt to support Amanda in her ongoing battle with cancer. If you're so inclined, the link to that is below. From that link you can also find the other offerings of Missy’s Marvels, you know, if you're into items with cute zombie brains and unicorns on them.

 

 

Update April 14, 2021

 

I was expecting to make a big post today about how great our Wisconsin trip was, how nice it was to see everyone, and thanking everyone for the hospitality and the food - so much food - and give some updates about my little project i was working on the whole time. And i will make that post. But unfortunately first i have a very different update.

 

Amanda started complaining of intense back pain late Saturday night. Sunday morning, as we were preparing to head back to California, it became chest pains. I tried several times to take her to the hospital but she was adamant that we get back to California before we do anything of the sort. This woman is fantastically stubborn. She had an appointment Tuesday morning with her radiation oncologist, Dr. C, which is what we were rushing back for anyway, and she figured she'd just mention it there and if the doctor thought it was anything urgent, she'd go to the hospital. After all, she said this felt exactly like the chest pain she had last year after they placed her port, which i also took her to the hospital for. Last year, they gave her an x-ray, found nothing, and sent her home with painkillers. She assumed this would go the same way.

 

She made the entire trip back suffering from intense pain. I tried to take her to a hospital in Denver also but she would not go.

 

We got home about 11:30 pm on Monday and we were both exhausted, so instead of going to the hospital, we went to bed.

 

At the appointment in the morning, she mentioned the chest pains, and Dr. C immediately pushed us out the door and phoned ahead to the ER that we were coming. She said she almost wanted to call an ambulance, but figured that if we made it from Wisconsin like this, we could make the 4 mile drive to the hospital.

 

Turns out when you show up to a hospital and tell them you have left-side chest pains and difficulty breathing, they barrel you through immediately.

 

After an EKG and a CT scan, they determined that Amanda has a pulmonary embolism - blood clots in the lungs. Due to the chemo and everything else they've done to her body in the last year, Amanda is at a higher risk of developing blood clots, especially while sitting for long periods of time (ie, in a car for three days driving to Wisconsin). They prescribed her blood thinners and referred her to a vascular specialist, whom she will see next week.

 

While we were at the hospital, the news broke that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been linked to some blood clotting issues. We don't think that's what's happening here, since the J&J cases have all been clots in the brain, and have occurred within 3 weeks of getting the shot. Amanda is 4 weeks out from her J&J vaccine, and the clots were all found in her lungs. But that doesn't mean there's no correlation; her doctors are looking into it.

 

The other thing to consider is whether she had a pulmonary embolism last year also, and they just didn't catch it, because they did the wrong scan. Blood clots don't show up on x-rays, a CT scan is required to find them. So that's scary also, that she could have been running around with blood clots in her lungs last year that the doctors just didn't find.

 

So that's where we're at with that now. All the good feelings and emotional recharge from our whole trip just, boom, gone in an instant, and we're back to this harsh reality again. Anyway, i'm still going to make a big post about our trip to thank everyone we saw and apologize to everyone we missed, and talk about my project, but i'm exhausted again and i'll circle back to that later.

 

Thanks everyone. Stay safe.

Update March 17, 2021

 [Amendment to March 13, 2021 post]

Hi again friends, i meant to amend this post much earlier but the day has just gotten away from me. 

 

Amanda had a phone appointment with her medical oncologist this morning. This doctor was somewhat less optimistic than her radiation oncologist, but she did echo that if it had to be somewhere, the bones is the best place for it to be. Again, best worst diagnosis. Cancer is very slow-growing in the bones, and bones respond very well to radiation. They have 3 cancer drugs they're going to be starting her on, including the new drugs mentioned previously by the radiation oncologist, which it turns out are not more chemo drugs. She will also be on 2 supplements aimed at building bones and preventing osteoporosis. She may be on all of these for the rest of her life. Also, these carry their own less-than-ideal potential side effects, including possible osteonecrosis of the jaw, which is frankly horrifying. On the plus side, throughout these treatments, there will be more monitoring and surveillance on the progress of the drugs, to make sure everything is working as it's supposed to.

 

She needs to get some testing and other consultation done before she can start the new regimen, and there will be delays while we wait for insurance to authorize everything. Since it's "slow-growing" in the bones, they don't foresee the wait being a big issue, like it was with the breast tumor previously. Therefore, this does not impact our plans to visit Wisconsin. We're still finalizing the itinerary, i'll make a big post about all that soon, but the dates are set. We're leaving LA on March 23 and need to be back April 12. So, we are looking forward to seeing as many of you as we can in between those dates!

 

Sorry i haven't replied to any of the comments on this post or all of the PMs and texts i've received. These last couple weeks we have been overwhelmed with the weight of all of this. On Monday we tried playing video games and i just. Could not. I collapsed into a ball and held her and could not get myself to focus or do literally anything all day. I'm back up and running now but it's still difficult to concentrate on anything else. Please bear with me, i'm finding it especially hard to people.

Update March 14, 2021

 

This update starts out very bad. Please read it to the end though, it gets...less bad.

 

Amanda had her PET scan on Wednesday evening. It seemed like it went well, but she became concerned when they thought she was done, and then asked her to move into a different position and took an extra scan.

She already had an appointment scheduled with her radiation oncologist for Friday. They anticipated having the scan results ready by then, so she could discuss it with the doctor. Given that modern technology exists, though, and that Amanda is “a persistent little bugger” (her words), she knew the scans would be available online on RadNet as soon as they were finished. So she spent Thursday refreshing the page regularly, ready to pounce on that report as soon as it was available. The images themselves came up early in the day, but she doesn’t know what she’s looking at, so she kept waiting for the interpretation.

 

Shortly before our scheduled JackBox night with Nat and Cal, i took the dogs out to go potty. When we came back 10 minutes later, Amanda was crying, and pushed her laptop at me with the report open.

The cancer has spread to her bones.

 

Positive new lesions were found in four of her vertebrae and in her right scapula. This is a Stage IV diagnosis. Stage IV is typically considered a terminal diagnosis, incurable. Stage IV patients typically live an average of 2½ years after diagnosis.

 

Cal called literally minutes after we read that. Her and Nat got the full brunt of the raw pain over the next hour or so as we talked through what this probably means for us and the future. I started drinking. We each had an edible. We started calling and texting Alyssa. When the edibles kicked in, we ended the call and sat by ourselves, trying to manage our emotions, until Alyssa finally arrived. By this point Amanda was high as a kite and when the door opened she tactlessly shouted “Guess what! I’m going to die! The cancer is in my bones!!” And i could see Alyssa’s heart just drop straight out of her body. She knew she was walking in to bad news. But that was unexpectedly blunt. We each had another edible. Alyssa tried some scotch. We ate two packages of Oreos. We watched Into The Spiderverse and spent the night just trying to come to grips with this devastating new reality.

 

Some would argue that Amanda shouldn’t have gone looking for that report before having a chance to go over it with the doctor. They may be right. I might be one of them. But at least this way, we got all of our emotions sorted and out of the way privately, at home, before having to go into a doctor’s office and deal with it there. And also this way, we kind of knew what we were looking at and we were able to assemble a list of questions ahead of time. So, there are ups and downs to doing it this way.

 

The radiation oncologist was very impressed with her for having found the report, read it, and prepared questions. She said that she wanted Amanda to work for her. Once she found out Amanda is a vet, she said that makes sense, lots of vets tend to be like that.

 

So she went over the report with us, and she thought this was actually not a terrible report. First of all, she stressed, this is not a death sentence. Yes, it’s a Stage IV diagnosis, but we caught it early enough and the lesions are small enough that there is still a good chance they can be targeted and dealt with productively. The most likely outcome is that the cancer will become manageable, and Amanda will just have to be on medication the rest of her life to manage it, like diabetes or high blood pressure, but at least she will have a “rest of her life.” But honestly, curing it is still not entirely off the table; it’s just a slimmer chance. Amanda has chosen to cling to the “treatable” possibility; that definitely seems manageable and vastly preferable to dying at 35. We can still hope for “cured,” but she doesn’t want to get her hopes up too much.

 

As Drew put it, “this is the best worst diagnosis.” Still the worst because Stage IV, but the best Stage IV diagnosis possible.

 

So we have something we can work with at least. We’re still going forward with the hormone treatments previously discussed, but there will be additional drugs added which may or may not include more chemo. The plan for radiation has also changed, they may be able to specifically target the lesions and hit them directly with radiation. So there’s still hope.

 

It’s really concerning to think about some of the implications here though. We’re lucky we caught this so early. But it only happened because Amanda was persistent and firm with her doctors. After we got that lab report, she wasn’t scheduled to see her medical oncologist for ten days yet; she called immediately and got the appointment moved up to the next morning. The medical oncologist never gave any indication she planned to get a new PET scan, that was something Amanda wanted and demanded and the medical oncologist ordered just to make her feel better. Given their track record for getting orders filed timely, Amanda gave them a two-day head start and then started calling daily to make sure that PET scan actually got ordered. We’ll never know if that persistence is actually what annoyed them into approving it so quickly, but we do know this is the fastest insurance has approved anything regarding her treatment in the last year. So if we had just gone along with the doctors’ recommendations, let the flow carry us, and just taken everyone at their word, we would be at least ten days behind, probably fifteen or more, in finding these new bone lesions. Would we have still “caught them early enough?” Would we have caught them AT ALL? 

 

Even with these new words of hope & comfort from the radiation oncologist, it’s still been tough to process everything that’s happened. These last several days since the moment we saw that report have felt like forever and an instant at once, we have no concept of linear time right now and if we thought we were in low-power mode before, we’ve gone past the empty tank and are running only on borrowed energy now. There’s still no guarantees. This is still a terrible diagnosis, even if it’s not quite as horrible as we first thought. But she’s not going down without a fight.

 

---

 

I want to once again thank absolutely everyone for all the support we’ve received through this last year. I know there is so, so much going on, virally, politically, personally, apocalyptically, and everyone is struggling. You have all been amazing to us and we truly have only made it this far because of your generosity, be it the money, the meals, the care packages, the video calls, the virtual game nights, the postcards, and everything else. I’m just going to gently put this GoFundMe link out here again, as always expecting nothing but humbled and grateful for anything.

 

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-out-wolfie-and-trevor

 

---

 

On a more positive note, Amanda was able to get her Covid vaccine yesterday! She got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, one and done, so she doesn’t need to go back for a second dose. She should be considered fully protected from Covid (at least as protected as one can get) in about two weeks. She’s definitely feeling the effects of it today, she’s very tired, her non-surgery arm hurts now also, and she has a headache, but it’s a small price to pay.

 

---

 

One last bit of news. We’ve low-key been planning this since December, for as soon as we had her post-op follow up schedule finalized. We’re coming back to Wisconsin for a visit. Originally, due to Covid, this was just going to be a small-scale, mostly hang out with our parents kind of deal. Given the news we’ve just received, though, we are hoping to see more of our friends and family. Amanda wants to hug everyone who’s willing to hug her. We know it’s not Covid-compliant, but we are seeking comforts in this moment, and if worst comes to worst... 

Update March 4, 2021

 

On Tuesday afternoon, we got the histopathology report on Amanda's tumor back from the lab. The surgeon, Dr. A, handed it to us and didn't explain anything. I don't remember if i posted the results of her surgery before, but the one thing she had really been hoping for was that she would get to keep most of her lymph nodes. After surgery we were told they had taken all of them. She was upset by this, wondered if it was necessary, wished it hadn't happened, of course.

 

The lab report revealed that of 26 lymph nodes tested, 21 were still positive for cancer.

That's a huge number, obviously. That's all of the sentinel lymph nodes and 3/4 of the axillary ones.

Furthermore, at diagnosis, she had one 35mm lump in her breast. What they ended up extracting in surgery was one 75mm invasive ductal carcinoma, plus an additional 70mm ductal carcinoma in situ (a pre-cancerous tumor). Her margins were clean but there are a lot of other little things in that lab report that sound nasty or discouraging.

 

She wasn't scheduled to see her oncologist for another week, but as we walked out of the surgeon's office, she called them immediately and was fortunately able to move the oncologist appointment up to yesterday morning, so she could explain the lab report to us.

 

The main takeaway here is that the chemo was not effective. It may have helped contain the cancer a little but it certainly did not kill the tumor, like it was supposed to. She felt like the tumor was shrinking during chemo, but during the four-month wait between the end of chemo and surgery, she started to complain that it was hurting again and felt bigger again. The doctors brushed this off as normal. They still can't tell us definitively if the longer wait contributed to these complications, but what is certain is that if the chemo had done its job, that tumor should have been dead and inactive regardless. Given all of the information we have currently, she would be considered Stage 3 now, up from Stage 2 at diagnosis.

 

The biggest concern right now is that cancer most easily spreads through the lymph system, so the number of infected lymph nodes is not a good sign. It's more encouraging that not all of them tested positive though, so it's possible the lymph nodes did their job and prevented it from getting any further.

They've ordered a new PET scan to find out for sure if it's been contained to the breast and the removed lymph nodes. We are still waiting for insurance to approve the PET scan so we can get it scheduled but we certainly hope that happens soon. If we don't hear anything today, Amanda's going to call them tomorrow morning and check in on it, and probably every day after that until they get their shit together and authorize the damn thing.

 

Setting the PET scan aside for the moment, this report still changes the way we're approaching her treatment going forward. She was originally expecting to get radiation after healing from surgery. Once they took the lymph nodes out, it was suggested she might not need radiation; now it has become definite that she will. The oncologist is optimistic that radiation will take care of any lingering cancer in her body. However, they have decided to be more aggressive with her hormone treatments. She was already expecting to be on hormone treatments for the next 5-10 years, but the stuff they were going to give her is not the strongest stuff available. However, to get stronger hormone treatments, she needs to be in menopause. They are going to be giving her regular injections to trigger an artificial menopause, which she will continue to receive until she goes into natural menopause. Given how young she is, that might be quite a while. But it will allow them to hit her with the most effective treatment they have.

 

This is all assuming that the PET scan comes back negative. If we find that the cancer has spread to other organs...that's a terminal diagnosis. Stage 4. At that point, further treatment switches from aggressively combating cancer to just making her comfortable and trying to prolong her life. We're trying not to think about that right now but it's a possibility that looms heavy over us.

 

By this point it should go without saying that we're scared. From where we started, this should have been an easily treatable, routine breast cancer case. And somehow it has become this fucking mess. In hindsight, yeah, we probably should have done surgery first and chemo after, which was what the oncologist recommended in the first place but the surgeon talked us into doing chemo first; if the chemo had been effective, he would have been right, and would have saved all but one of her lymph nodes. We had no way of knowing the chemo wouldn't work. It's useless to second guess the past at this point, so we're just focusing on moving forward. But yeah, we're scared.

 

There's still a couple things working in her favor, at least. The lab report shows that the cancer is still receptive to the hormone treatments, and her HER-2/neu status is still negative, which is good; those are the bright spots we're clinging to. Given everything in the lab report, the oncologist thinks there's about a 30-40% chance the cancer has spread. So the odds are still in her favor, but that margin is shrinking.

 

On top of that, we learned late last night that a friend and former coworker of hers died by suicide this week. That's been difficult for her to process, on top of the shock from everything else.

 

I don't have a good way to wrap this up. 

 

---

 

UPDATE March 5, 2021 3:32 pm pdt

 

The PET scan is approved. We can call back in one hour to get it scheduled.

 

UPDATE March 5, 2021 4:28 pm pdt

 

Wednesday, 3:30 pm 

Surgery Updates February 24, 2021

February 24, 2021

 7:15 am
They did keep her overnight again. Dinner and her midnight snack stayed down. She should be coming home this morning. She sure sounds ready!

 2:01 pm

Amanda just called me with some updates. She's finally spoken with her surgeon. I hadn't posted this yet because we were waiting for confirmation from the surgeon, and the plastic surgeon and nurses we'd talked to hadn't so far been entirely sure, but they did have to remove all of the lymph nodes on her right side. This was something she was emphatically hoping to avoid. Losing the lymph nodes will lead to additional maintenance in the future and possible mobility issues in her dominant arm. It's unfortunate, but there was cancer still found in them so they had to go. She's focusing on recovering from surgery now and we'll deal with the long-term implications later. We'll never know now how effective the chemo actually was, or if it would have been possible to save the lymph nodes if she'd had surgery in late November/early December like she was supposed to and would have if not for Covid.

She has also noticed that the back of her arm is numb, and hasn't regained feeling this whole time since surgery. The surgeon says that's normal, and it will return over time but it may be days or weeks.

 

She's successfully eaten her last several meals, including some solid food, without vomiting. No one has talked to her about discharge yet, though, which is weird; we thought they were trying to get her out of there as soon as possible due to Covid reasons (reducing vectors both for her and for the hospital, freeing up beds, etc). The nurses also have already asked her about her preferences for dinner and breakfast tomorrow. Still hoping to get her home today but now it's looking like tomorrow is also a possibility.

 

On the plus side, she sounds much better now than the last time i talked to her on the phone. She sounds much more awake & alert and like she's getting her strength back. The nausea was mostly attributed to the anesthesia so now that that's out of her system it shouldn't be an issue going forward. She's being fed and kept comfortable and pain is under control. That's about all we can ask for right now.

 

 4:41 pm

Alyssa and i should be picking her up about 6:30.

 

 7:59 pm
She is home.

 

 8:11 pm

  

Surgery Updates February 23, 2021

February 23, 2021

 10:18 am pdt
I've talked to Amanda a few times today. She's still exhausted. Last night she had a little Jello and threw it up, and continued vomiting through the night. This morning she had some soup and so far has kept that down. They're going to try moving her along to solid food for lunch. As long as she's able to keep that down, she should be coming home this afternoon. Neither of us have spoken to the surgeon yet, hopefully he visits her soon.

 1:01 pm pdt
She ended up vomiting again about an hour before lunch. So far lunch itself is staying down.

 1:07 pm pdt
This morning she was definitely in pain. They had already given her 2 oxycodone and she said they told her she could go up to four, so she was going to talk to the nurse about getting some more. However, we already know from previous medical experiences that narcotics make her nauseous (not uncommon) and she hasn't eaten much soooo

 1:09 pm pdt
Molly: I just texted her. She says the pain is manageable right now.

 3:50 pm pdt
They are giving her Zofran and Metoclopramide (Reglan).

 3:52 pm pdt
Amanda's case manager called me a little bit ago to make sure i was available to pick her up when she was ready. She suggested it was possible they may keep her overnight again. So far Amanda has managed to keep lunch down without issue, but she says she thinks they will keep her through dinner at least. No one has talked to her about another night yet.

 4:05 pm pdt
Jolene: She hasn't been having any trouble going to the bathroom, so at least we've got that box checked. Hopefully the food situation improves.

In addition to whatever painkillers they're sending home, i picked up some weed on the way back from Costco. Weird, that. Can't imagine what i would have thought about "weed" being on my grocery list ten, five, even two years ago.

 

 4:11 pm pdt
Molly, Jolene: Yep. She started experimenting with edibles about halfway through chemo when the pain and nausea got too much. It's been extremely helpful, definitely better than any of the pain meds they've prescribed her. The ones i picked up today are a little more powerful than what she's been getting. We've been going up slowly in increments since she has no previous history of marijuana use.

 

 4:19 pm pdt

Update: Amanda says it sounds like they are in fact planning to keep her overnight again. Also, the surgeon still has not come by to talk to her.

 

 5:15 pm pdt
Jeri: There's a dispensary two blocks from the house. I just walk in, they ask what kind of THC to CBD ratio i want, and whether i want that in cherry or pineapple. I don't think they covered this in DARE.

 

 5:21 pm pdt

Zuul is convinced she is never coming back.

 

Surgery Updates February 22, 2021

February 22, 2021

 8:22 am pdt
Alright friends. Today's the day. I'm taking Amanda in for surgery now. Will post updates as available.

 9:53 am pdt
Dropped her off a bit ago. She was expected to stay overnight, but now they're saying she may be able to come home tonight.

 12:48 pm pdt
Just heard about 15 min ago she's through nuclear medicine and waiting on anesthesia. Procedure is expected to take 4 hours and end around 6:30, so i assume they're starting at 2:30. She is very thirsty and hungry, since she hasn't been allowed anything, not even water, since midnight, but otherwise is doing well so far. I doubt if I'll hear any more updates from this point until surgery finishes.

 2:12 pm pdt
They're about to take her into surgery. She says her hospital gown is warm and toasty. They've certainly improved hospital gown technology since i last had surgery in 1999.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 2:13 pm pdt
Meanwhile Zuul is velcro dogging me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 2:30 pm pdt
They've taken her in to surgery.

 3:46 pm pdt
The hospital just called to inform me that surgery began 10 minutes ago. They are now estimating about two hours for the entire procedure and will call me when it's finished.

 6:21 pm pdt
I just talked to one of the surgeons. Amanda is out of surgery and headed for the recovery room. Everything went well and there were no big surprises. They will be keeping her overnight, as originally intended; the admitting nurse was mistaken when she said Amanda could go home today. I'll post more after i get a chance to talk to her directly.

 7:34 pm pdt
Just talked to Amanda on the phone. She's very tired and wasn't able to say much, but she was awake. It was good to hear from her. I'm a little more relaxed now than i've been all day. The nurse said they're still waiting for a room to put her in, once they have that she will call me back and give me the room number and direct phone line to Amanda.

 9:02 pm pdt
The nurse just called, they're moving her up to the room now and getting her settled in for the night. I have the direct phone numbers for both the room and the nurse who will be taking care of her tonight. She'll be getting her cell phone and other possessions brought to her shortly, but she will likely be zonked out on painkillers and resting for the remainder of the evening, so i don't expect to hear from her until tomorrow. The nurse i talked to the last couple times says she's "a tough cookie."

Update January 25, 2021

As usual i'll start out by apologizing for how long it's been since i've given an update on Amanda's cancer treatment because it has been months.

 

Bad news today. LA hospitals remain completely overrun with Covid cases, so they are still not scheduling surgeries. We had been told in December that they were expecting to start scheduling again on February 1, and her surgeons are pushing to expedite the process as quickly as possible; she is supposedly among the first three patients that they want to see when things open up again. Being as February 1 is now six days away and we still had not heard a confirmation, she called this morning to follow up on that. They are now saying no sooner than February 22. We have now watched the surgery date slide from end of December to beginning of January to beginning of Feburary to now end of Feburary.

 

Surgery was supposed to take place between 1-2 months after the end of chemo. She finished chemo October 20, which puts us over 3 months out already, and now looking at another month at minimum. Meanwhile, the tumor has felt bigger again, and she's experiencing more new pain associated with it. We have concern that it may be growing, and the delay may be causing it to spread again, possibly into more lymph nodes. She was expecting hormone treatments for the next 5-10 years, starting after surgery; they've begun those already in an attempt to keep this under control until surgery happens. She's been on them for three weeks already. They can't give her any more chemo.

 

She had a breakdown as soon as she got off that phone call. Chemo all summer, for what?? Self-isolating, not going to work, not seeing a n y b o d y , not going anywhere for the last 10 months, for what?? It's hard being this far away from our support network but it's not safe to travel and it's not like we could see all of our friends and family if we came back to Wisconsin anyway. Wisconsin is handling the pandemic worse than California is. The only reason their numbers aren't as high as LA's is because of population density.

 

I suggested trying to go elsewhere for surgery but it's basically impossible. Our health insurance is only good in California, and even to try and go someplace less Covid-ridden for surgery would face other slowdowns. They won't operate unless they have an existing doctor-patient relationship, which would involve finding a new surgical team and having new consultations and probably redoing testing and basically starting over. Which logically should take a lot longer than waiting it out for LA hospitals to become available but at this point frankly i don't know. They say LA county's numbers are going down but the hospitals are still in pretty bad shape. Who knows how much longer this will take.

 

As if that weren't enough bad news for one day, i checked my EDD account just now. I had posted a couple weeks ago that, after ten months of calling unemployment, sometimes up to 50 times a day, being told every time i actually talked to a human (6 times) that a specialist would need to call me back because of the complexity of my situation, and that specialist never calling back, and being told 3 times that all record of my having contacted them or created an account had been lost, i finally got the claim at least filed. Finally. In January of 2021. And they were backdating it to Feburary of 2020. Well, today i found out that my entire claim has been denied. Not only are they denying me regular unemployment, i am somehow not even eligible for the pandemic assistance. They sent me a separate denial for each week of the claim. The ones from the weeks where i actually worked say "denied because you were employed full time this week" (which, i mean, i expected to get partial or no benefits for those weeks) and the ones from weeks where i didn't work just say "denied" with no explanation. All of the messages say "your maximum eligible benefit has already been paid out." They have paid me exactly $0.

 

We are grateful to everyone who contributed to our GoFundMe over 2020, you're truly the reason we stayed alive. Other than that we've just been eating into what we had saved for retirement. This whole time i didn't feel like it was that big of a deal, because what we took out of there wasn't more than i had expected to receive when my unemployment finally came through (as i was expecting more than just the pandemic assistance), and i figured we could just put it back. Now it looks like it never will. Obviously i'll try appealing the decision but given the way this whole thing has gone so far i'm not optimistic.

 

So that's where we're at. It sucks and there is nothing we can do about it. The helplessness is the worst part. Fuck cancer and fuck coronavirus.