Dear readers, it’s been a while since I last wrote a blog post and my life hasn’t gotten much easier since then. As I cope with my new diagnoses, I am faced with difficult real life decisions. All these choices also kick up a lot of emotional trauma and I’m having a really difficult time swimming these shark infested waters. Let’s recap, shall we? In July 2022, I caught Covid-19 and was ill for a full three months. Not only that, but it also caused long Covid and those symptoms did not dissipate until the following spring/early summer 2023. What does that look like you ask? I went from being able to walk 15 km + a day to not being able to get out of bed for days at a time, severe joint and muscle pain, the inability to walk more than 1 km, I can no longer stand for more than 30 minutes at a time. My feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt, my back hurts, my shoulders hurt, my elbows hurt, my wrists hurt, and each and every single joint in my hands hurt. Eventually, I couldn’t take

In April 2006, my sister Roxanne announced she was pregnant! I remember feeling shocked, happy, disappointed, and excited all at once. When we were kids, we vowed to go through the pregnancy journey together, when we were grown up and married. I was married in 2004, but I definitely didn’t feel like an adult even though I’d just turned 32 when my sister told me she was pregnant. I remember thinking she told me because she wanted me to take her to the clinic… so I offered to attend the abortion with her since she wasn’t yet married. Fortunately, she saw my good intentions and assured me she was ready for motherhood and that she and her partner had plans to marry after the baby was born. Her due date was November 2006. She was so beautiful, pregnancy definitely agreed with her; labour not so much as I recall she had ‘back labour’ and was in a lot of pain. I remember feeling guilty that I wasn’t pregnant at the same time so we could experience growing a human being together. I also reme