My Crazy Life Journey, Part 1

So, I’m really wanting to track my journey so I can look back someday and reminisce. Sure, there’s some bad things that happen, but there’s also good, and I want to remember that.

I’ll start from the beginning…kind of; at least the beginning of my adult life. It took me a very long time to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.

My mom was a preschool teacher for over 25 years, and she was an excellent preschool teacher. I often helped her with the kids, especially at the end of the year when she had their graduation at the zoo. It was lots of fun helping. I was in high school and just graduated when I started helping her more.

My parents also owned a horse boarding facility, so I actually gave people horseback riding lessons for years. I enjoyed that for a while, too.

One day as I was giving a lesson, I had an epiphany. Since I teach kids every day anyways, and I really enjoyed it, why not just become a teacher?

I thought it would be really cool to have the summers and weekends off, and I liked I sort of already knew how to teach to a certain extent, so I decided to go to college and get my degree in teaching.

Well, long story short, teaching was not at all what I had imagined it to be. I was totally wrong about getting the summers off because I actually NEVER got a summer off, and I had to work the weekends ALL THE TIME!

It was super stressful, I became depressed, and I was sick all the time. My immune system was totally shot from hanging around all the kids all the time, and I knew I didn’t work in a school anymore…nope, I worked in a germ factory!

I worked more hours than any human being should have to work. So, along with working the summers and the weekends, I worked at home after I got off work at the school! There was ALWAYS something to do, and I felt like I could never get caught up!

It began really, really wearing on me. I was never happy. I never got to spend time with my family or my friends. Everyone always wondered where I was. My husband would have to go to parties and get togethers without me, because I either didn’t have time to go or I was sick.

It was absolutely ridiculous! I didn’t have any sort of a life, whatsoever! My life was my job, and I started really hating my job.

I was the last teacher to leave the school at night and the first one there in the morning. My principal loved me because I worked so hard, but even he said I really needed to start taking care of myself. But how?? How, when I have so much to do all the time!?

Needless to say, I had an entirely new respect for teachers after I became one. It’s definitely not all sunshine and rainbows like many people think. Teachers work SO HARD!

I also had a tuition from college that I’d probably have to pay on for the rest of my life. It’s ridiculous how much it is to go to college! And it’s ridiculous that people who don’t make millions of dollars a year are supposed to pay that crazy amount in tuition!

I think tuition should be based on what you’re making in your career. For instance, as a teacher, it’s not fair that I pay the same amount of tuition as an engineer or doctor. I don’t make enough to pay the same amount as them.

Now, a doctor or engineer can probably afford a little more in tuition, plus, they probably get a little more out of their tuition.

I ended up owing over $140,000 in tuition, and there was no way I was going to be able to pay that off with the paychecks I was getting.

I felt so lost. I felt like I worked my butt off for nothing. It was really hard to face that fact, especially after what happened later. But I’ll get to that.

I was completely and utterly burnt out. I dreaded getting up every morning and going to work. It killed me. I ended up being severely depressed and I felt so alone. I felt like I was in a deep, dark hole, and no one could hear me screaming. It’s the most awful feeling in the world when you’re surrounded by people, but you still feel so alone.

I even dreaded getting up on the weekends after a while. There was no joy in them anymore. I was either working or too tired to go do any of the things I used to love to do. I often slept in as long as I could, and then when I did get up, I worked.

I so wanted that feeling to come back that I used to have when I was excited to go do something fun, like camping, riding my dirt bike or mountain bike, riding my horse, or pretty much just being outdoors, but that feeling was long gone, and I had no idea how to get it back.

I missed my family more than anything. They even lived right next door to me, but I felt like they lived thousands of miles away! My sister had just had a brand new baby, too, and I could never go see her because I was always sick or completely drained. This made me so sad because my husband and I couldn’t have our own kids, so I really wanted to be a part of my niece’s life, but my life was getting in the way. It was torture.

To top it off, my dad was having health problems, which really worried me, plus he had just had surgery for prostate cancer not too long before this. I didn’t want to miss spending any time with him because you never know what might happen, but I was missing all of it.

I also just lost my grandma, who I loved with all my heart, and I never spent enough time with her, so it was literally killing me. I felt like such a loser, but I didn’t know what to do to change things.

I wondered if other teachers felt the same way I felt, and I wondered how they did it. How did they manage work and their own lives? I suppose some people are just meant for that kind of work, but I knew in my heart that I wasn’t.

As I said earlier, I was sick all the time. One day after work I became really, really sick. Which was actually usual obviously, but this time was a very different. I had a severely sharp pain in my left hip area and it actually kept me from even being able to walk. Every movement I made was excruciating and no one, including me understood why. I literally had to crawl to the bathroom, crying as I crawled because I was in so much pain. I’ve been hurt plenty of times before and broken and torn all kinds of things in my poor, abused body, but this topped them all. This was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I just wanted someone to put me out of my misery, it was that bad.

My husband showed up as I was crawling to the bathroom and freaked out, asking what was wrong. He hated that I was sick all the time, but this time I could see the fear in his eyes. I told him I was okay, and I would go to the doctor tomorrow if I still felt this way. That wasn’t good enough for him, thank goodness!

He called my parents and they came running over. After seeing me they decided to call the ambulance. I’d never ridden in an ambulance, though, and I really didn’t want to today, so I told my parents what I told my husband, that I’d just wait till tomorrow and if it was still bad, I’d go to the doctor. They didn’t believe me, of course, because I really hate going to the doctor, plus, I must have looked like death because they called the ambulance anyways and didn’t give me the option to say no.

The entire drive in the ambulance is a blur to me, but I do know that the lady poked me at least 20 times trying to find a vein. I guess when you’re scared and in a lot of pain, your veins tend to shrink and hide. I didn’t know that until then, and I was in A LOT of pain and didn’t know why, so of course I was scared. She never ended up getting a vein, so when I got to the emergency room, they started poking me all over again.

Did I mention I HATE needles??

I was in the emergency room for 8 hours before they finally found a vein! 8 hours! So on top of being in excruciating pain, I felt like a pin cushion! Finally, they called someone in with an ultrasound machine to find a vein. Don’t ask me why it took them 8 hours to finally do that, because I couldn’t even begin to tell you! My parents and husband were getting very pissed about it. After my dad yelled at the nurse, “You’re hurting her!” they decided to send the professional vampire in. Took them long enough!

In the meantime, I had been getting MRIs and tests done with no pain relief! It was killing me! Every time they moved me, I moaned and groaned in pain. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness because of it, so I only remember parts.

After I spent that 8 hours in the emergency room, they sent me to ICU. I don’t remember that part at all, but my parents and husband do. They were very scared.

After all the tests they ran they finally found that I had contracted a weird blood infection. To this day we still don’t know exactly how I got it, but I’m assuming it’s because I nicked my chin bone on a wheelbarrow in the barn and cut it open. Even though I cleaned it religiously, it became infected. That’s the only thing I can think of that would have caused a blood infection.

They called it Serratia Marcescens, and I guess it’s everywhere. It’s in the dirt, in your dog’s water bowls, in your toilet and shower (if you’ve ever gotten a pink ring around them), and more. But it’s very unusual for people to contract, so it was a mystery, which scared me even more because I didn’t know what to avoid.

I kept my toilet, shower, and dog’s water bowl clean. But because I have dogs, I wondered if I had contracted it from one of them, but the doctor didn’t think so. That’s why I think it must have been the cut I got on my chin. The doctor also said that if you have a weak immune system, bacteria can easily get into your body, and I had a super weak immune system, hence the sick all the time thing.

BINGO!

I have a VERY weak immune system, in fact, I didn’t even know if I had an immune system anymore!

The doctor also told my family that if I would have waited one more day to go to the hospital, I might be dead.

Wow. That was very eye-opening. So final. Looking back I’m glad my family is as stubborn as I am, because I wanted to wait one more day, and honestly, I would’ve wanted to wait one more day after that, and another after that, so it’s a good thing they didn’t let me or I would not be telling you this story right now.

It was then that I knew I needed to make a change in my life. Life is way too short to wait around. I needed to do something, and I needed to do it NOW. I was tired of being sick all the time, and this episode really scared me. Who knows how much time we have on earth. Who knows how much time our family and friends have. I knew if I didn’t make a change now, I might miss everything, including my family, and I couldn’t have that.

I was in the hospital for a week, and I guess I should have stayed longer according to my doctor, but I needed to get out of there and start pursuing my new life before it was too late. I didn’t have another minute to miss.

I still couldn’t walk when I went home, and I was still in excruciating pain, but at least the blood infection was gone, or so they thought.

I was happy to be home with my puppies, on my couch, with my computer. I started researching ways to make money from home.

I found all kinds of things, and I tried all kinds of things. I tried surveys and writing, different systems that promised to make you money overnight, and all kinds of things that never did what they said they would do. It was extremely frustrating, and all the money I had left was disappearing quickly from me trying one thing after the other. I knew I didn’t want to go back to teaching, so I knew I wouldn’t have another paycheck unless I found something that worked.

Then I came across affiliate marketing. It looked interesting. I decided to sign up and give it a try, but unfortunately that try didn’t last very long.

You see, in the meantime, when I was at home, I was going to doctor’s appointments every week to get checked on. One week when I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for the doctor to come back, I got a really bad, sinking feeling. I couldn’t explain why, but I knew something was very wrong.

When the doctor came back, he explained that one of my bones had contracted the blood infection. WHAT???

I just went through hell, and you’re telling me I still have it, and it’s in one of my bones now?? That can’t be good! I felt my heart sink.

He said that I would have to have a catheter placed in my arm so that I could give myself antibiotics every day for about 6 weeks. If you know anything about catheters like this, they aren’t fun, but at least I could stay home and do it myself.

Anyways, I had a nurse come to my home once a week to clean my catheter, and I had antibiotics and supplies shipped to me once a week. It wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t fun, either.

Ya know, to this day I don’t know for sure if the infection is completely gone…they never tested my blood after the catheter came out because my blood didn’t show the bone infection to begin with, an MRI did. So I guess you could say that I don’t even know for 100% certainty that it is a bone infection. That’s a scary thought!

But, I’m going to keep on living my life the way I want to live it, and just hope and pray that nothing like that ever happens again, but they say there’s a reason for everything. Maybe I had to almost die to change things. Like I said before, I’m really stubborn, so maybe that’s the only way I’d learn.

While I was home, nursing myself back to health, I decided to come up with a plan. I was going to work from home no matter what. I wanted to work my own hours, be my own boss, and do what I wanted to do. Simple as that… or so I thought.

© Copyright 2019 Jennifer Hovda – All Rights Reserved