In life, I count friends rather than money. And with that philosophy, on Kos I am a rich man indeed. all of you have nurtered and sustained me, through good time and bad, and I am unendingly appreciative of your kindness and support.
ursulafaw is one of those friends. One of my closest friends in here. She’s a couple of years older than me, so I loved her right off of the bat. She started as so many of us do, lurking. One of the dark corners she liked was my diaries. She started posting comments in my diaries, and that’s the kiss of death with a chatty Mick like me, as you who comment well know. Kosmail came next. From there she took the plunge to writing diaries, She is a frequent guest on the Rec list, where you can love her or hate her, just like me. And just like me, she lives and breathes in the comment section of her diaries.
She scared the shit out of me in February. She disappeared for over a week, not only with her wonderful diaries, but from my comments and diaries. There was a good reason for this. She was diagnosed 3 years ago with anemia, They didn’t seem to realize quite how serious the anemia was, and she ended up ion the hospital, very badly off and receiving massive blood transfusions to save her. When she got out, she sent me a long e-mail chronicling her experience, and prefaced it with the blunt fact that she had come perilously close to crossing the Rainbow Bridge. She has been hospitalized 5 times for her anemia in the last two years alone.
IN a rare stroke of sanity for her, she blames me. If I hadn’t written my stupid “Murphy’s Law”, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. Her condition forced her onto disability, paycheck to paycheck. She developed sciatica. She doesn’t remember the primaries because she finally rejected her heart medication of 13 years. This meant an ambulance trip to the hospital, and 10 weeks of treatment, basically a medical detox to purge the stored medication components from her body. It ended up costing her memory loss of that period, she remembers almost nothing of the primaries, even though she was lurking at the time.. As a result, she is on California’s Medicaid program, with all of the wonders and joys that provides. She now has to have 5 front teeth pulled, but only after being treated by a quack that couldn’t even take a dental x-ray properly. She would have been malpractised out of business years ago except that the underpriviliged can’t afford lawyers very often. And oh yeah, her beloved VW, which is old enough to vote failed its emission test, so just like me, ursula now hoofs it or takes the bus. Little wonder she jokingly blames me and my shitty law!
But you’d never know it to read one of her diaries, or her replies to the comments therein. ursula is a fighter, and no matter how bad things get, she instinctively looks to the bright side, and soldiers on with the things she can do well, like her entertaining and ever informative diaries. While my dear ursula knows that I’m writing this diary, she is at heart mortified that it has to be written at all, a feeling I well know and share. It’s never fun asking for help.
But asking for help for her I am. ursula hasn’t put s goal for herself, she’s more interested in just getting by at this point. What’s she’s really hoping to achieve is to at least be able to get the front two of the five teeth that need to go taken care of so she can use her mouth again, and she would shit Tiffany cuff links of she could manage to get her precious VW fixed so that she can at least move around again, a feeling I can wholly understand now that the Chrysler is gone, and I’m hoofing it right along with her. If you would like to donate to help her, she has set up a PayPal account, you can go there and find her under her e-mail address of ursulafaw@gmail.com . If you don’t have a PayPal account, or would rather send a check, you can contact her by Kosmail, and she’ll provide you with her address. And even if you can’t donate, please feel free to leave her a message of encouragement, as I well know, at a time like this, the moral and emotional support is every bit as necessary and welcome as any financial support.
I thank you for taking the time to read this non political, non sarcastic diary, and for any moral or financial assistance you can give her I thank you from the bottom of my little black Irish heart. Slainte mhaith (Gaelic for good health).