I had a friend contact me to see what I've been up to since the surgery and since he hadn't seen much of me on social media so I thought I'd share some things that are going on in my life. Now I'm not a big fan of people saying "life sucks" or "fml" because I know there's people out there dealing with much worse than what I am, but it damn sure hasn't been very kind lately.
My wife is a Captain and a Veterinarian in the Army Reserves and was deployed to Kuwait just over two years ago. It was a rough 6 months for me and the girls without her around, but I know that's a short deployment considering some are gone for a year or more. Well the time has come again for her to be sent off to another foreign country for 6 months and will be leaving in a matter of days. She's not shipping off to the middle east this time, but it's still a place I wouldn't want to visit. We tried to be proactive and hire a relief vet to cover the vet clinic while she's gone and got things in order, but the Army gave her the wrong deployment date by a month so the relief doctor was under contract to start already which has now put us in a bind financially because we are paying him to work at the clinic even though she's still home. Everything would be fine if business was good, but for some reason the last two weeks have been shit and the appointments have dwindled down to 4-5 a day rather than 10-12. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things will change soon.
On top of preparing for my wife to leave her father has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and a tumor on his cerebellum. He has been told that the cancer is not curable, but is treatable. So basically they can extend his life for a couple or three years, but he is going to die from this in the near future. This news has crushed my wife and she is struggling with guilt since she has to ship out and she's already cried herself to sleep in my arms a couple of times. She's looking into being able to stay stateside for a little while, but we aren't sure what will come of it. The did some sort of gamma knife thing on the brain tumor yesterday which should have killed it and has relieved some of his symptoms like blurred vision and ringing ears so that's some good news. The hardest part was us trying to explain to our girls what's going on and the likely outcome of it all. I'm not sure how I'm doing with it all yet. I've known this man for more than half my life and have referred to him as "dad" since Kim and I first started dating in high school. I'm sad and angry, but I won't let him see it when we are around him. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude and outlook for mine and everyone else's sake.
Lastly, more from the clinic. Three weeks ago we had a veterinary technician up and quit on us without any notice which left us with one tech, but we've been handing it and had one of the other staff members step in to help out, but then last week we had two of our part-time kennel techs turn in their two week notices. This has seriously screwed with the schedule and coverage. My oldest daughter, Meredith, has been working at the clinic for us in the kennel and front desk so she's stepped up and helped cover some of the shifts and I'm actively searching for a kennel person to help out. One bit of good news is that we've hired a part-time front desk person so that I can move the other employee to the back to serve as our second kennel tech.
We are doing our best to keep our heads up and keep moving forward.
Thanks for reading. You're all basically my shrinks now.