It’s so stupid. Yesterday afternoon I came home and wrote a political piece. My world was the same I was angry about the same things, hopeful about the same things. Life was just chugging away as normal.

I cooked dinner… we watched a TV show… Stocker submitted his latest paper for uni… then he sat me down. I knew what it was about before he even opened his mouth… He’d just been made redundant.

I know that I’m meant to take this like a champ – and be supportive and hopeful and all that shit. I have not taken it well… Today I cried the whole way home from work talking to my sister. You see… we’re in a bit of a “situation”.

I have a heart condition called Wolff Parkinson White – thankfully it’s one that can be fixed in many cases – as in, it’s curable for a decent percentage of people. I started having episodes of lightheadedness which has almost lead to total and incapacitating syncope about 12 months ago. There was one such incident when I was driving home from work which perhaps shook some sense into me. I did make it home, I didn’t have an accident, but I could have. And I could have hurt someone else.

Back to the hospital I went and I volunteered to be a student teacher EPS case. EPS is pretty busy so I was given a time frame of between 3-6 months back in April when I saw the specialist. My case was interesting though so he believed strongly I’d be in before that. A few weeks after my consultation my procedure was scheduled for July 21st – a very fast turn around, I was happy it would be looked at with such haste. Until then I was put on a regiment of other pills to reduce the occurrence and severity of my episodes – while it was done with the best of intentions it didn’t work.

During May, I got bored and depressed – so I booked airfares… it’s my go-to when I’m down about life, health, work, whatever. Following the flights I started chipping away at accomodation and transportation. We were living life as normal. Except for one critical thing… I didn’t book insurance. I was uninsurable until my discharge letter from Cardiology – which would have been issued in August or September (still plenty of time before our trip in January) so I just waited.

Most policies cover sudden and unexpected change in work circumstances… our policy would have… but I never took it out…

So here I am, at my computer after sobbing to my sister for an hour… trying to figure out how to get us out of the mess I’ve created by making the assumption that life was business as usual.

Stocker is confident he’ll have a job in 4 weeks… but I’m not so sure. Not because of his level of skill – he’s very skilled. But because the state of the labour market and the state of his industry. My head takes me to this bad place where it will be 6 months before he has work again… perhaps longer. In that time I’m going to be working 50 hours at FTJ and as many as I can freelance to make up the $250 a week freefall we’ll be in. I’ll be doing this at the same time as my heart procedure where if my heart rate jumps above 190, I can end up back in hospital with serious blood clotting around the area of the repair.

I’m terrified and so angry with myself that I would take anything in this world for granted.

I have no doubt we’ll get through this… but I am afraid of the damage I’m going to have to do to myself in the meantime….