The worst news

The last couple weeks have been a tornado of thoughts and emotions. I've been doing a lot of escaping, crying, planning, and worrying. I've been thinking about things too much, and then running and not thinking of much of anything at all. I'm not ready, but no one can be. Not for this. 

My mom has stage 4 lung cancer. 

She's an amazing woman, and my biggest role model. She's strong and tackling this struggle with "the power of positive thinking." They found the cancer when she had a lung x-ray after suffering from a respiratory infection. She's feeling better than she has in months now that she's on antibiotics, though the spot on her lung has supposedly been there many years. I wonder if that could have been the origin of the breast cancer she survived. She begins chemo this week. Chemo is a treatment for stage 4-IV:B lung cancer. There is no cure.

I need to do everything I can to get back to Minnesota to be with my family and help them through this. I want to make sure my mom enjoys some of the best years of her life. She spent all of hers taking care of others. It's time she saw some of that treatment.

What this means for me:

- I need to get my affairs in order and move back to Minnesota as soon as possible (likely this summer). I will have to leave Jordan behind until next February because we cannot break our lease.

- I need to find a place to live in MN.

- I need to find a car (my 28 year old car in MN is rusted out bad on the bottom and may be unsafe to drive).

Unfortunately I have no money for any of this to happen. Even though I'm employed now, Jordan and I are still just scratching by and relying too much on the credit card. 

I plan to start a crowdfunding campaign, likely on Indiegogo, to make this happen. I will be offering several "perks" to people who donate, including custom animal artwork and access to the book I'm writing about my experiences living between two worlds (the north country and a southern city). 

This is going to be a hard road. I'm doing my best to focus on the happy and the good, rather than the fear and the pain. I know my mom is doing the same.