Things are getting messy

Raging rain storm in a small town

As the holidays approach I find myself upset. Not only am I facing a drought in the financial area, it is determined that my daughter is in need of having four more moles removed. In a delicate area of her body. She was upset to say the least.

The financial drought is temporary. I was (am) very good at saving money and had a very nice sum set aside for rainy days or (heaven forbid) a loss of work. That stash has been dented. One thing after another.

Of course insurance is going to pay for the surgeries, but it is the mental burden here. Does she really need them removed? She has had about 8 removed from her back and each one has come back with the results of benign and mild. Not malignant and not melanoma. The dermatologist says "Oh!" when she sees the moles in the private areas. She said they need to come off and the sooner the better. My daughter was in tears when we left the office. (She was laughing by the time we got home - forty-five minutes later).

I can tell she is upset. I am making an appointment with our family physician and asking her opinion as to if we should keep up this body mutilation or do we take the chance of taking a break for a year or so, or do we just chuck this mole removal altogether? My Mom had a mole in her private area (I never saw it of course) but she had no problems. Is it better safe than sorry? My daughter does NOT want to be cut down there.

What is a Mother to do? I understand her frustration because I am frustrated and exasperated that each time we think "This is the last one!" more need to be removed and each time the results of the lab work are "It was a mild and benign one." Don't other people just live with their moles?

But, on the other hand Mother does NOT want her daughter to get melanoma. Or anything else for that matter! I just want to scream! Stop, Stop, Stop! This madness! This has been going on for over 2 years, now. Another one, cut, cut, cut. Snip, snip, snip! More scars.

We try to look at things in a more positive light. We are not dealing with cancer, we are not dealing with the loss of a limb, we are not dealing with burns over half of her body, etc... we do try to be thankful that we don't have anything more serious to deal with. I don't say this in front of her, I keep those thoughts to myself. In her world this is disastrous enough. She did mention that she is thankful it isn't anything worse, but she is devastated by it all. Tired of it all.

And, then there is my nephew. Is he going to have his open-heart surgery? Is it going to be this year? I am going to corner him next week while he is off on vacation. When, when, when? So I can plan. His Mother is back in prison so that leaves me to be the Maternal one. I don't care to go into detail about her, believe me it does not deserve the blog space. She is a lost cause, we sort of wrote her off years ago. She can't handle pressure so she kind of drops out of society and this is her way of doing it. As close as I can guess.

Now, what will I take for Thanksgiving dinner? Where will the money come from for Christmas shopping? Back to the little things. The daily grind. Things are indeed messy. Gray sky and stormy weather. We'll ride out the storm. We have been here before.

Just to clarify, I do not qualify for Share-A-Christmas or anything like that. I have plenty of money to pay the bills and buy groceries and get Christmas gifts. I don't mean to sound pathetic. I am just saying the savings account ain't what it used to be. Financial woes are a big stress factor and that is one of two or three I am facing this holiday season. I like to have the money before I spend it, you know what I mean? I am able to pay my charge cards off each and every month, that is how careful I am. I know that some folks are in debt up to their eyeballs, and I am thankful that I am not. I'm just not used to having such a thin safety net.