Shelly Brozio
ANNOTATIONS
TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by Kristine Villanueva
Interview conducted in 2018
Transcription by Kether Tomkins
Ok, so, again, could you say your name and–
Shelly Brozio. I live in Spotswood, New Jersey. Um, what else? I'm poor [laughs].
Um, how old are you again?
Fifty-four.
And you said you’ve lived all over New Jersey?
Yeah, basically.
Um, let’s go back a little bit, um, is there any particular reason you’re moving around a lot?
My mother got married, she was married twice, my father was her second husband. I guess, I don’t know why we were moving around, oh, because she had five kids and a lot of places don’t want the kids, ‘cause it’s too many kids. So, I remember one time we lived in Parkwood Village, that was in Parlin and we were only allowed to have three kids and we had five. There’s enough room for five of ‘em ‘cause it was a big apartment, it had a basement. All three of us girls were down in the basement and the boys were upstairs. They shared a bedroom and my mother had her own room. So it’s enough people, right? They said we had to get out. I guess that’s why we moved around a lot. I don’t know. But, my mother was by herself, because my mother and father were divorced by the time I was seven. So it was just my mother and five kids. She had to work a lot. That’s why we were moving around I guess. I don’t know.
Um, has that contributed to your current situation in any way?
Yeah, I really didn’t have a mentor telling me I shoulda been a doctor or something. You know, have a successful job. Then I got sick, and I can barely write my name. I can write, I know how to read and write, I can’t hold a pen for a long time so I just scribble and let it go at that.
Can you tell me a little bit, um, about your disease?
It’s Multiple Sclerosis. So it comes and goes. But I have remitting, relapsing Multiple Sclerosis so a little bit stays behind. When it comes, it comes and a little bit will stay behind. Like I can still drive, but I don’t want to drive ‘cause I don’t have my pedal foot on the gas, it’s not quick enough to go to the brake. If a kid’s running across the street, sometimes my foot won’t move. That’s not good, so I won’t drive. Screw it. Sometimes my hearing goes, sometimes my vision goes but it all comes back. So that’s my– my legs work. I was swimming the other day. My right leg is bad and I’m swimming and it’s like my leg was like a duck’s broken wing. I’m trying to swim and it’s kicking all over the place. I can’t do this, but anyway, that’s my illness.
Uh, when were you diagnosed?
I guess when I was 30. My thirtieth birthday, two days before my thirtieth birthday I had my first symptom and that was I couldn’t, one of the symptoms was I can’t pee all the time. It won’t let me. I have to do the kegel, is that for the pregnant women? I had to push on my belly to go to the bathroom so I drink a lot of water and it will flow easily. I know that so, and it took them ten years to diagnose me from there. So from there, it started when I got sick and I thought it would go away, and it did go away and I still worked. I didn’t work while I was sick, but it went away and I went back to work. I had been a waitress, I’ve always been a laborer. I had some office jobs, but mostly labor jobs. I had to quit that job because I was waitressing and now I’m older, I gotta be forty, I was taking someone’s order and the pen flew out of my hand and I wet myself. I need to go home right? [Laughs] So I don’t think I went back to work after that. I think I did, my last job was at a trucking company. But that was an easy job. I was a logistics clerk. I was like, “I can do this job, this is easy.” I typed everything up, and after a year, disability said you can make any amount of money you want for a year and then we will start petering you off of Medicare and DSI. I said, “Okay.” So eleven months into working I got sick again. I started going to the doctor. I said, “I shouldn’t be this sick again this soon,” and the doctor said, “You can’t work. You can only work twenty-five hours a week.” Ah, but it was a forty-hour-a-week job. She goes, “Well I don’t know what to tell you, I never had to fire anybody. You’re a good worker.” I said, “Don’t worry about it, I quit.” And I went back on disability. went off disability and got the job, then I went back on disability. And they didn’t take me off disability yet, because they said you have a year to make however much you want. So I didn’t lose any money. So, uh, I went back on disability and this is where I’m at now. Now I’m going to the food bank and then the storm hit, still talking about the storm. Ah.
We’ll revisit, we’ll revisit the storm. I just want to get a clear kind of timeline. So can you tell me a little bit about what you were doing uh, I know you said you had a bunch of different jobs. Can you give me an idea of what you were doing before you were diagnosed with MS?
I was waitressing. I was waitressing at Friday’s. I think that’s when I was diagnosed. Yes I was. My friend Terry came to visit me at work and she called me and she was like, “Why aren’t you at work?” “I don’t know.” ‘Cause I didn’t know what my illness was. I didn’t know what it was for the longest time and finally I got a spinal tap. And that would be, I can tell you exactly when that was, um, my nephew’s birthday. I had it the day he was born so it was his birthday. I guess he’s got to be twenty-three, twenty-four years old now. And that’s what they said I had, MS. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t have a cure for it.
Um, how did it feel when you were first told you had MS? Like how did you feel at that moment?
Well, they told me that MS has, I used to walk in the woods a lot with my dog, and um, I’ve got ticks on me from walking in the woods, no big deal, right? And um, so the doctor said, “It could be Lymes Disease.” And I said, “Really?” So maybe I have Lymes Disease. But it doesn’t matter, because neither one is curable so you’re sick either way. So eh. So I have MS. I just accept it. He put me on Avonex. And that was a once-a-week shot but it was intramuscular and it was a really long needle. It was painful, so and it threw me for a loop. They call– at the time they had the ABC medicine. Avonex, Betaseron and Copaxone. And Copaxone is what I’m on now. But the Avonex is what threw me for a loop. It was horrible. I was all happy I could go to a restaurant in public and I was taking a bite, look at me, I went to take a bit of the burger and I squished too hard and it went flying out and I had a bread sandwich. I guess I can’t eat in public yet. But that was that. So what else do you need to know? I don’t understand.
I mean like this is also for other people who, you know, don’t know what MS is, just kind of a fleshed out explanation of really everything.
Oh, well sometimes I slur my words, I sound like I’m drunk. So if I slur my words, excuse me. I’m not drunk. I slur my words and I spit sometimes. My mother gets mad at me. I have MS meetings. They have luncheons or dinners, sometimes they have breakfasts, sometimes they say a lot about mood swings. MS can give you mood swings. Like I get mad and yell at my leg all the time. “Come on already!” I tell it to go forward and it won’t go forward. I have to pick up my toes ‘cause that’s basically, my toes don’t work and I think it affects my whole leg. But anyway, and he said the mood swings. MS affects mood swings or mood swings affect MS. I don’t know which way he said it, but that’s that. So I just look at my mother, ‘cause we’re always fightin’ [laughs]. Forgive me my mood swings and I have to forgive her hers too, ‘cause she’s older [laughs].
It just sounds like a lot of the simple things are really hard to do.
It is. I applied for Medicaid. I’m on Medicare now, I just applied for Medicaid two or three weeks ago. And, uh, ‘cause I need an aid. My doctor was telling me, you should get a helper. I’m like I don’t need a helper, what do I need a helper? Then one day I’m like, I do need a helper. All I’m doing is doing the dishes and then sitting down, resting.
Sorry. Okay.
Then I’m doing my exercises. Resting. You know, I’m always maintaining the house. That’s all I’m doing. Maybe I’m going out, but I gotta go hurry up and maintain I’m going out for a cup of coffee, but I’m putting all my house work on the back burner. I got that much more to do. ‘Cause I got a guinea pig. My friend, I had a dog, but she died in October and before that.
Oh, sorry can you um, talk a little bit, go back a little bit and talk about how you were considering a helper?
Yes I am. Um, okay the dog thing has to do with. She died in October and my friend had given me a guinea pig, before she died, thank God. So now I’m taking care of a guinea pig. My friend goes, “Oh you’ll only have to clean up after the guinea pig once a week.” No, only if you don’t want your house to stink like guinea pig. I have to clean up after her everyday. Everyday I have to clean up after her. So it’s keeping me busy. Not that I wasn’t busy before, ‘cause doing the laundry, everything’s hard to do. It’s not hard to do because I’ll rest in between, but I’m not having any fun. Sorry.
[Laughs] Sorry can you do that last part over again?
Everything, I can do everything but it takes me a– it takes you five minutes, it takes me an hour. But I get it done. Just don’t race me [laughs]. ‘Cause you’ll win, you’ll win.
So moving forward from that, I guess your MS is the reason you’re having difficulties with like, economically?
Cause I can’t work. Because my work was not, I can’t be a supervisor over whatever somebody’s doing. When I was working at Friday’s, I was becoming a trainer and all I did, you know how in restaurants when they're training somebody they’ll have the real waitress standing behind them and hovering over and like, don’t you find that annoying? So what I did, I told the last kid I trained, I told him you know what, I showed him what I did all the time, now you’re going there by yourself and I would stand by the register and when he came over I would quiz him. And he was getting pissed [laughs], I was like, “Well do what I said to do, and you’ll be–” ‘cause I got to keep all his tips and he didn’t like that either, but hey, what are you going to do? So that’s how I trained ‘em. Then I couldn’t stand anymore so I said, I can’t do this so I had to leave. If I had a sit down job where I could supervise them, I guess it would be okay.
Um, are you currently living alone? Do you have family?
Mm-hmm. My family lives close by. My brother lives up the street, my mother lives around the corner from me. So yeah they’re close by.
Do you get a lot of help from them?
When I need it, yeah. My father is building me a new porch because mine was rotted away from I don’t know what. From the people who lived here before. He’s building me a new one. My brother helped me get a new roof for my porch ‘cause that was rotting. So yeah. They basically help.
It’s good to have family around.
Yes. That helps you [laughs]. Okay, um, I don’t know what else to say to you.
It’s okay. I’ll ask questions. Um, I’m just really, really conscientious about sound.
Okay.
So you had mentioned that you had problems when Hurricane Sandy hit. Were you already diagnosed with MS?
Yes. I was living in South River and it destroyed my home. Everybody’s house, it was a trailer park and everyone’s house got destroyed. But I said, you know what– I talked to FEMA about it and I go, “Well, what would you do?” ‘Cause they gave me a whole bunch of money. And he goes, “Well, I’d move.” I said, “That’s it, I’m out of here.” I wanted to stay. My father and brother are in construction and they wouldn’t fix my house. I said, “What do you mean I gotta move?” [Laughs] It turns out now, the house I live in now, it’s bigger, it’s nicer. I have a pool so it’s better there, where I’m at now. But I miss South River, ‘cause it was my home for fifteen years.
Wow, so can you kind of describe I guess, were you at home when Hurricane Sandy hit?
No, I was at my brother’s house. Me and my big old dog was at my brother’s house when Sandy hit. And that was the end of that. The water came up maybe a foot. It was right below the electrical outlets. It came right up to there and then it receded. Just for like thirty seconds. They told me, I wasn’t there. But it flooded everything. But my father said what if all that water in your house is powerful? What if it knocked your trailer off its foundation? You don’t know. And as we were packing up to move to the place I’m at now, my friend was talking and walking and he turned around and looked at me and he fell right through the floor [laughs]. And I sold it for three thousand dollars. I was like, and that floor’s no good either. What were they going to do? They already bought it. They knew it was destroyed. It wasn’t like I was lying to them. So– that was that.
What was it like losing your home? How would you describe that feeling?
Devastating, devastating. Yes, um, my church would come over all the time with food, like hot coffee and food, not for me, for everybody. Toilet tissue and stuff like that, I got a whole bunch of stuff from donations. That was nice, but still it was devastating. I thought my shower curtain. I couldn’t believe all the boxes, everything was destroyed, so why did I have all these boxes of stuff? Right? But I saved my shower curtain. My girlfriend’s laughing she’s like, “Why did you save your shower curtain?” I’m like, “‘cause it’s the only thing that didn’t get ruined in the storm.” My sister wanted to get me a new bed. I love my bed because it came from a motel. A nice hotel. A Marriott. You know it was a nice hotel. She’s like, “You have to get rid of the bed.” I’m like, “I’m not getting rid of the bed.” I still have the bed. That was a big fight. So l lost everything. My girlfriend had her carpet steamer at my house. She asked me, “Do you have my carpet steamer?” “No, it got destroyed in the storm. I don’t know what to tell you.” Everything got destroyed in the storm, so. Anyway.
I’m also conscientious about your cane. So I’m going to scoot it over a little bit.
Was I making noise with it?
Yeah.
No worries, I can put it on the floor.
[Laughs] Okay, I think I had mentioned to you that my brother had lost his home and he was also in South River.
Oh, where was he?
He was on Levinson Ave.
Where’s that?
That’s across the street from, there’s this church. I think that it’s a Coptic Orthodox Church and it had like, you know where Whitehead Avenue is?
Yes, I know where the church is.
Yeah, it was off of that street. So he also lost his home in the floodings.
Horrendous.
Crazy.
Somebody showed me videos of my street, of the river rushing down my street. It was a street, not a river, but it was a river at the time. It was horrible. I lost my home, so what are you going to do?
So what happened after that? You said you had difficulties with FEMA?
No, FEMA was wonderful. They gave me $22,000. I bought the trailer I have now. And, uh, here I am. And my family moved me in New Years Day. I didn’t want to move in because when they came out with the book 2012. So and that was supposed to happen. All that stuff was supposed to happen. So two days before Christmas right? So she said, “You can move in December fifteenth.” I said, “Oh no.” She said, “No?” “I’m not moving in until January first.” I want to make sure it’s still going to be here. She goes, “Oh don’t be so superstitious.” I said, “You know what, sometimes you need to be.” That was that.
Can you describe your house for me? What did it look like?
My old house? It looked like a trailer. There was a big tree in the front. On the side, sorry. My clothes line was behind it and there was a shed. That was the outside. My father built the shed. And um, the inside was just a trailer. You walked in and there was a living room, the kitchen, the bedroom. Keep going there’s a bathroom. Keep going and there’s another bathroom and that was it. It was a trailer.
And you like the new place that you have now?
Well, now, it’s almost like a double wide. You walk in and the front door is a porch, a closed in porch. You walk through there and you have a living room, to your right you have a full bathroom, and a bedroom and to your left you have the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, go around the corner and there’s a washer and dryer, another porch, closed in. Come back in the porch, and there’s another bathroom, I call it my little hotel room, there’s a bathroom. I got a bar sized refrigerator and I got a big, it’s like a two man tub. If I’m too lazy to go to the pool, I can sit in the tub. It’s nice and a small shower in that bathroom. It’s like a hotel room. They have a shed, I put all my stuff in there. It’s nice. It’s bigger, it’s nicer, I like it.
Uh, I think what’s really difficult for people I guess, to understand about this, I guess situation that people are in is just because you have like, things doesn’t mean you aren’t going through a hard time, or that life isn’t hard. So can you kind of expand for me a little bit about some of the things that you struggle with you know like beyond like the MS, and the things that are really hard for you to do, like laundry? What are some of the expenses that you have to worry about that are, are they difficult for you?
I’m always saving. I’m saving right now for my house insurance. I pay $400 a year. So I’m saving for that now. I have $300 that’s not due until January. I’m always saving for something. My car, when I was still driving and I was meeting my uncle and his wife for lunch in South River and I went there and I got into an accident. A fender bender. Nobody got hurt or nothing. I backed up my car and I think it was a setup because the woman didn’t beep the horn or anything she just sat there and let me hit her. It was kind of weird. But anyway, so she sued. But I have to tell you this. Her car was grey, dull grey and dirty. So she goes, “See where you hit me, my car was brown. Your car hit me right here.” I can't see it because your car is dirty. Listen, I don’t mean to be mean, but your car is dirty and nobody’s going to notice your little nick. My car did it, ‘cause I felt it. So anyway she sued me and my insurance doubled. So I said you can keep the car. I don’t need the car. So I got rid of that expense. Then the dog died. Where I live in Clearwater Village, I gave a security deposit for my house and it turns out, putting it in the bank like that, it got, Clearwater got bought out by Hometown America. That’s who owns it now, they gave everyone there their security deposits back. That’s at least thirty houses. They gave back like $30,000. Wow, so now I have $1,000 in my pocket. My dog got sick, my dog got sick again, my dog got sick again and then she died. There went my thousand dollars [laughs]. That was my last expense. Now I have the guinea pig. When he dies, I can just throw him in the woods.
So the biggest thing for you right now is health insurance.
That’s why I’m trying to get Medicaid. And help. Sometimes I’m doing the dishes and I start going down, down, down. I can’t even stand there to do the dishes. You know, sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. It depends on how my body feels that day.
Um, so um, can you tell me a little bit about, you’re on Medicaid right now?
Medicare.
Oh, okay.
I’m trying to get on Medicaid and Medicare. I’ll still be on Medicare. It doesn’t matter. I fall all the time, but I get back up. I haven’t fallen that I can’t get up, so thank God for that. I’m doing okay.
What’s that like when you fall? Does it hurt a lot? Is that how–.
No, you get back up [laughs].
I wasn’t sure if it was a muscular thing, or how sensitive your muscles would be.
It’s my leg. My leg or my body not responding to my commands. You think with your hand, close your fingers and you close your hands. My hands, I’m closing my fingers and they won’t close. My big toe, I can bend this toe like that but I can’t do that one. It’s weird so. It doesn’t hurt, it just doesn’t work. That’s the best I can describe it.
Um, and then switching to Medicare and Medicaid, how would that help you?
Well, Medicare pays eighty percent of most things and I’m on PAD. My medication is very expensive, so they pay for most of that. I pay six dollars a month, for like three months and then I don’t pay anything ‘cause I’m in the catastrophic stage. The Medicaid would help with everything. I have to pay twenty dollars for my regular doctor. My copay is twenty dollars and for my neurologist, I had to take him down to once a year because I’m a perfectly healthy sick person and he goes, “Yes you are.” He agrees with me, so I’m going to come once a year and if anything bad happens, I’ll call ya. He goes, “Okay.” So we leave it at that. For a while there I was having episodes where I thought we were in an earthquake. And it was me. It was my eyes were shaking like that and it was me. I thought it was an earthquake. And it stopped. And then it got worse and worse to the point where I couldn’t. I had to lay on the floor. If I lifted my head up, I would want to throw up. [Unclear] Living room and I used my toes, I pushed myself until I got into the bedroom and I got up and hurried to and got on the bed, and laid there until morning ‘cause I couldn’t watch TV ‘cause everything was going wackadoo. In my mind, not for real. And I woke up and it was fine. That happened three or four times.
And you’re gonna think this is the crazy part. I’m religious. I try to go to church every Sunday, um, I have my parishioners drive me back and forth and uh, I wasn’t going for a while because George, my rider got into some health issues but um, what was I going to say. Okay, for the illness I just told you I had, every couple months. I willed it away.And I believe you can do that. The mind is an amazing thing. You can do wonderful stuff. I woke up one night and I walked across the fourteen feet to the other side of the living room and oh, another earthquake, another earthquake, I better go sit down, so I laid down. Oh man, it’s really hot in here, let me go see what the heat’s on. You’re not going to come here anymore, you’re not going to do this. Go away and I’m talking to this crap that’s going on in my body and I don’t know what it is. Because my neurologist, I told him about it and he goes, “Okay, we’ll send you to a specialist.” I was like, “Alright.” The doctor cost me fifty dollars for my copay, the neurologist. Then you want to take me to a specialist, so that’s one hundred dollars a copay for the specialist. Then report back to me the doctor, so that’s another fifty dollars. In one month. That ain’t happening. I don’t care that much about this thing. I was just telling you because you’re the doctor and I think you should know these things. Sorry. So uh, anyway now I’m back home and I willed it to not do this. I checked the temperature and I lowered it. And I went back to bed. Now, I usually have these episodes during the day. So it was hard for me, I’m hyper, it’s hard for me to sit still. But it was night time so I'm going to sleep. Anyway, so I went back to sleep, I woke up and I was fine and I never had another thing since. This was in the winter time. I should have had two or three of these things going on. I think I willed it away. My father was like, “Eh, your mind.” I believe the mind can do some amazing shit. I’m sorry. We don’t even know. We use eight percent of our brain, right? We don’t know. And that’s that.
And you were never properly diagnosed through the doctor or the specialist?
No, it cost too much money [laughs].
So I mean Medicaid and Medicare would help a lot with medicine.
They would cover one hundred percent. Between the two of them.
Do you know how much it would cost otherwise?
I know when I first got sick, my medicine cost $1,000 a month. I don’t know how much it costs now. They used to give me three months of medicine, now they only give me one month. I give myself a shot three times a week. Um, and that’s good that they only give one month’s supply, cuz what if I die? [Laughs] Right? Like what a waste of money. And I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about anybody. Three months of medicine. What are you gonna do with all that medicine? Anyway, so I don’t know how much it costs now. I would think $2,000. ‘Cause now I only get one month’s supply not three. So I don’t know what it costs, but I know it’s a lot, but between Medicaid and Medicare, it would pay for the whole thing. I wouldn’t have to worry about it.
Have you ever run into anything difficult with disabilities or any other kind of aid programs that would help you?
I don’t really understand the question
Um, I know that you can sign up for disability if you can’t work and other governmental, I guess, benefits or programs. Did you ever have any issues getting any benefits?
No, see now. I don't go anywhere, I don’t do anything so I don’t really need the benefits or the programs. I don’t go anywhere. If I want to go to MS meetings, they have them right at the library. I can take the bus there and it will cost me a dollar and they’ll come by in an hour and pick me up or every hour until I’m ready. I can go to Shop-Rite and I take the scooter there and I just drive it around and I get on the bus and I go back home. And the people there, my father doesn’t want to admit I’m disabled, I think because he had me, he just gave me some tomato plants and he goes, “Before I get here, I want you to go to the store and pick up a bag of potting soil.” I said, “Okay.” So I went to the store and the potting soil was forty pounds, plus my other stuff. I said, “How am I going to, what is he thinking.?” ‘Cause I’m thinking I’m disabled and you’re watching me disabled, what’s wrong. So anyway, I got this potting soil into the basket and I went to wait for the bus and I had the people walking by, strangers walking by, helping me get the bag onto the bus. Then the people on the bus had to help me lay it on the side of the house. My father said, “How did you do that?” “By the kindness of strangers, Dad. Don’t ever ask me to do that again.” Obviously he wasn’t thinking, he wouldn’t have done that. He’s actually a very kind man. He usually drops me off first, and then go park far away and then walk back. So I know he’s not a bad guy, but anyway. But I don’t know what my point was [laughs]. I went off on a little tangent there.
That’s okay. I think that it’s a good way to describe, I guess, like, just all the little challenges.
Yes. That you don’t realize ‘cause you don’t think that I’m just now, I’ve been disabled for at least twenty years, at least. I don't know how long I’ve been disabled. I’m not like an alcoholic, I can’t tell you the exact date, except for that one symptom, two days before my thirtieth birthday. I don’t think about it. I don’t think about myself as being disabled because I’m used to it, you know what I mean? So, but now I realize, my doctor said, “You need help.” “I’m like, I don’t need help, but maybe I do need help.” [Laughs] I don’t need help going to the bathroom, or washing or anything. I can do that, but I need the handicap seat in the shower. My tub is handicap so I can hang on to stuff. And that’s all normal to me. That’s what I’m trying to say. If it’s normal to you, you don’t realize it. Like Helen Keller didn’t realize her disability until people told her. She thought she was normal.
It seems like you’ve kind of adjusted now to–
You have to [laughs]. It’s do or die right?
Yeah, yeah. Um, so I think I’m trying to find, like, the little things that I might have missed, ‘cause you answered a lot of the questions that I had already without me asking you about them. Like what is the most difficult part, you already talked about your MS and the little challenges that are big everyday.
Getting into the car, sometimes I have to lift my leg up to get in the car. I can get in the car and one leg is out so you gotta lift the leg up ‘cause you can’t do it by yourself. My friend noticed it one day I was getting in the car and I got back in, and I just lifted up my leg and he goes, “You did that all by yourself.” and I said, “No, I did without the help of my hands.” and he goes, “Well, yeah.” and I said, “Well that’s not going to happen tomorrow, that’s just today.”
We talked about your job, your family, your medical is your biggest expense ‘cause transportation is pretty accessible to you where you are right now right?
Mm-hmm.
I have one question um, that I think is more of a reflective question and that’s all I have unless you have something to add on. I kind of wanted to know if there was anything about your situation that you wish people could understand better.
Okay, one time I went to a church dinner and I have to sit by the bathroom. I'm so glad there’s a bathroom right here. Because sometimes I wet myself. I can’t hold it, I can’t help it, it just happens. And I have to always know where the bathroom is, and sometimes people don’t understand when I say, “Get out of my way, get out of my way.” It means get out of my way. And the more you look at me, I’m going to get madder and louder, and meaner and people don’t understand that. “All’s I was doing was standing there.” You’re in my way [laughs].
It’s something you can’t help.
Yes.
That’s a good way of describing it, I guess. Um, is there anything else that I might have missed, we talked about Hurricane Sandy, we talked about MS, we talked about your family being close by, your house situation, transportation. I’m really drawing a blank [laughs].
What are you going to do with all this free time?
[Laughs] I just wanted to make sure I’m not missing anything.
Well, my father, okay, my father has three kids. I’m the oldest and ‘cause I’m sick he doesn’t talk to my brother, he doesn’t talk to my sister, so I’m going to be the sole inheritor, which is going to be hell when he does die. I don’t think my brother cares, he doesn’t want anything, but my sister’s a different story. I’ll just give you everything, I don’t care. Except the house, I want the house. So I’m going to have to move up to Washington, and my brother says, you don’t want to move to Washington ‘cause I can’t be there in a heartbeat to help you. So I have to think about that. But there’s got to be other people around that area to help me. I’m getting older, I’m not twenty anymore. I’m fifty. So I gotta think about that. But I think anybody my age has to think about that too, right? Yeah.
Definitely. And you don’t have children.
Nope. Just dogs, I got them all from the pound.
I love dogs.
Me too. I don’t know how I did it with the last dog. Seventy pounds of muscle. And she liked to pull.
What kind of dog do you have?
No, I don’t have one anymore, she died.
Oh right, right. What was she?
She was a mutt. They said she was a Rhodesian Ridgeback but she wasn’t that big. She was a mutt. A strong mutt. Good dog. But what are you going to do? That was horrible. I put dogs down throughout this time of being sick. My first dog, I put down because she was old, fourteen years old. Took her to the vet and put her down. Then I got another dog on Craigslist and she was sick. I had her for two years, she was sick. She had a big lump on her chest and her blood work was so bad they said, “We’re just going to put her down.” I said, “Huh?” I thought they were going to give her Pepto Bismol or something, because she wasn’t eating, but they said, “No, we’re going to put her down.” Then I got the one that just died now, now I got another dog after that. I got a black dog who was starving in the woods, I don’t know how a dog starves in the woods, how stupid can you be? You’re a dog, come on. But he was starving, he was literally eating himself. He had a pointy head, because the rest of him was all eaten up. It was the weirdest thing. He had projectile diarrhea until the day he died, which was only two years down the road. Thousands of dollars later, I put into this dog. He always had projectile diarrhea. And he would stand there like, [makes a noise]. Oh my God. It was horrible. Then I got the last dog. She came from the pound but she was a puppy. I said, I can’t do these old sick dogs anymore, ‘cause it’s killing me. And I had her for ten years. And then she passed. But by that time, I didn’t have a car and she was 70 pounds. And I had gone out to dinner, we have a meal every Wednesday night, a community meal at the church, a different church. And I came home, she was fine, I came home, she couldn’t get off the couch. I said, “What’s going on?” And she’s going [makes panting sounds] and she wouldn’t get off the couch. I thought that was weird. So, I went to the living room, I was up all night waiting for her to come out. Usually in the first five minutes of you getting home, she would jump all over you and love you to death. Right? ‘Til you get mad. “Knock it off.” But anyway, she didn’t do nothing. Sat there breathing heavy, wouldn’t get off the couch. So in the morning I called Bloomit Kennels and they said we can’t put. I said, “My dog is dying, I don’t have a car, I can't carry her because she’s heavy.” She goes, “We can’t put them down anymore because PETA–” is that the name for the animal thing? “PETA stopped us from doing it. We used to put animals down, PETA stopped us.” I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me. The dog’s dying.” I don’t understand that, but okay. She goes, “I’ll give you a–” I love this vet, but I’ll never use her again ‘cause I don’t need a vet, but I’ll give her to anybody who needs it. Anyway, she gave me the number to this other lady, another vet. I called her and I said, “My dog is dying.” And she goes, “I’ll come, I’ll come to your house, but I can’t get there ‘til after business hours.” I said, “Okay.” She is still sitting on the couch, won’t play with anything, won’t eat, won’t drink. So she gets, I put a box under the couch to help her get off the couch. What happened was her paws had slid, the rough part of her paws that were really rough, they had slid off of her feet. It was weird. So I put it there to steady her, and she got off the couch and she walks to the other side of the house and laid in the hallway to the bedroom. So I put her water dish there, and I gave her some treats and, “I don’t want them.” So I sit on the floor with her. She gets up and goes into the bedroom and lays next to the bed, so I sat on the other side of the bed. I’m sitting on the floor, talking on the phone, she belly crawled. I want to curse this dog out, ‘cause it’s breaking my heart. She belly crawled to me ‘cause she can’t walk anymore, 70 pounds and she belly crawled. I said, “Chloe, Chloe, you’re killing me, what do you want?” And she’s like, “I just want to lay my head on your lap.” And laid her head in my lap. Oh my God, oh my God. So this was going on all day. So now she belly crawls to the other end of the bed and tried to hide under the bed. She couldn’t do it. Thank God the vet came. So now the vet’s coming. Now she crawls over to the closet door and ow, ow, starts banging her head against the closet door. And the blood’s flying. My mother says, “The vet’s coming.” I said, “Tell her to come here. Give her the shot, give her the shot.” She said, “Hold her still and keep her quiet.” Hold her still? Where the hell is she going? I said, “I’ll hold her still.” They finally put her down and took her away. Ah. So I could never. I put down all those other dogs. You know people say, “Oh maybe I put her down too soon.” I did not put her down too soon, I put her down too late because she had to go through that. You know? I don't want to go through that again, that was horrible. And that's the end of my story.
Thank you, I’m going to be in touch to see what my editors want, what else I could ask, or any missing details about anything. I think we pretty much hit the basics of stuff.
Okay.