Most people think that being ill is the worst thing of all. Being constantly in pain, not being able to do normal things when you want to, having to wait all the time and always asking for help.
I have found that there is a whole other side to illness that doesn't seem to come up. The crippling financial strain. It costs so much money to be ill. Doctors, medicines, more medicines, changes in medicines, specialists, scans. The having to pay someone to clean for you each week, pay someone to do your ironig each week, not being able to grow your own food, paying for all kinds of treatments, trying anything a few times out of desperation to be cured and the worst thing - the loss of your wage. I have been unable to work now for 1 year and 2 months and I am not going to be going back to work either for a very long time still.
This means that tonight we have had to talk about selling our farm and moving to the burbs. Not too far away as I need my specialists and facilities and most importantly MY SUPPORT NETWORK, and of course the kids school and friends. As life is hard for them when I am bad and cannot play with them or take them places, they need the stability and security of having friends around them, that are also willing to take them off for sleepovers when I am in a bad way and hubby is overseas. One the one hand I long to be close enough to crawl to a shop or doctors surgery instead of the 30kms drive to even get a a carton of milk, and on the other hand I love my farm and my animals, all the plants I have planted and all the soil improvements I have done by hand. My dreams are all here, yet I cannot tend to the land or the animals alone any more and I cannot plant plants anymore. So I know that the right decision is to release the land to someone who will use it properly again, as arrable land is as precious as gold in these days of endangered food supply chains.
This is the cost of my spine, it is taking some of my dreams away, it is placing strains on my poor hard working hubby who doesn't get a break for 5 mins because he is supporting this very expensive spine. I am angry about what it has taken from us, but at the same time I feel blessed to have had this lifestyle and how it enriched us all and blessed as well that I have a choice. And, that we can get back to not living day by day waiting for something to bounce, and having a smaller place that I can manage. Maybe this will give me a little more independance again, moving to a more manageable lifestyle. One thing I know is a new phase is coming for us, not in a hurry, but it is slowly coming for us, and our lives continue to evolve and I continue to find ways to live and manage with the hand I have been dealt, and I will continue to do it with gratitude as things could be worse. We have one another and we are a family that is in love, and our home is where we are, not what I see around me everyday, though I will miss the view I love - over the rolling paddocks. Everyday I look out my kitchen window and marvel at how beautiful it is and how much I love it here, I have NEVER once got bored of this view. But I will carry that with me to where ever I go. It is one of my beautiful moments of my life captured forever in my memory.
As the sun rises and pushes its fingers through the trees over the grass and the steam rises from the earth. Heaven.
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