Monday, May 7, 2012

Bills, Bills, Bills

Today's mail: In addition to my usual J. Crew catalog and fashion magazines, I received a stack of medical bills. 28 to be exact. I stopped opening them after the third bill when I realized I was already in the quadruple digits.

I knew some bills would continue to trickle in over the next several months, but I didn't expect 28. And I certainly didn't expect them all on the same day.

Talk about ruining your Monday.

While in Arizona, we were charged somewhere in the vicinity of $70,000 for my treatments. I just kind of expected that to cover everything. But as they say, and I am constantly learning, expectations are a bitch.

Cancer is a bitch.

Days like today, I feel stuck, like my life is at a standstill. I try so hard to put cancer behind me, but it's impossible. Evidence of it is literally showing up in piles in my mailbox.

How can I move forward when I am constantly dealing with my past? How can I move forward when I am constantly fearful that my past will once again become my present?

Like most of my peers, I should be saving to buy a house or planning a vacation or discussing whether or not I want kids. But how can I do that with mountains of debt and a medical history that refuses to be "history?"

I've thought about selling my eggs to make money, but once you have to start checking the "cancer" box on medical history forms, your eggs are no longer attractive options. I've also thought about trying to win thousands of dollars on the nickel slots at the casino, but I've never really been lucky win it comes to gambling. The lottery? I'm 35,000 times more likely to be hit by an asteroid than win it.

So how do you move forward and escape a cancerous past when a steady flow of bills constantly show up on your doorstep? As the Hubby's best friend said, "Move."

That would certainly be easier than winning the lottery.



Update: The Hubby finished opening and adding up all 28 bills. The total? $8,563.47. Seriously, after spending $70,000 on treatments, how am still getting $8,563.47 dollars worth of bills…in a single day?

Perhaps we should move after all. Or, just wait for that asteroid.