
@babyboss
I'm so sorry you are having to deal with all of that at such an early age.
At 23 I was diagnosed with Rheumatic Fever and spent a month in the hospital, 6 months in bed and it took me over 10 years to recover. It hit my joints hard and now I'm dealing with osteoarthritis and borderline RA.
I wouldn't wish having to deal with what I have dealt with on anybody but you are living it every day and dealing with it admirably.
True that about taking frequent rests. That's what I try to do. Don't get much done. Done care. Nobody besides DH is going to pitch in and help me so what doesn't get done today will be there tomorrow waiting for us.
It has taken us longer to get projects done this summer though. I have two coops right now, one with my original flock, or what's left of it thanks to Marek's disease, and the other with my bantams. The bantam coop has about 45 birds in it...well, 22.5 in chicken math. The other coop has 16 birds in it. Those birds are all that is left of a flock of almost 30 birds this time last year. I'm thinking of culling them as they are almost 4 years old and it's getting harder to keep weight on them.
Going to one coop over the winter then cleaning, sanitizing and letting the coop the big birds are in now air out over the winter months will give me a break when the snow is blowing and I can open that coop in the spring for the cockerels so they can beat the snot out of one another when the breeding season rolls around again.
Big word of advice. Don't bite off more than you can chew.
@Latestarter. My bad. I think you have probably read some of my rants about insurance companies on the Old Folks Home. They are the reason why you are paying so much for medical care today, and even back in O3. In 93 I was in an auto accident and had to be ambulanced to the nearby hospital 1.5 miles away for a neck injury. My bill was over 1000$ back then. Just to be strapped to a backboard, have a c-collar put on me, my vitals monitored. The insurance companies pay only a fraction of what you are being billed. The high costs comes from them trying to make up the loss. For instance. 5 years ago medicare paid something like 58 dollars on an eye exam (I know this because I was the office manager in my DH's office). The patient paid something like 28 dollars and we wrote off the rest because we were a medicare provider. All insurance companies work this way. Doesn't matter how much we charged or didn't charge, they were only going to pay so much and no more. Some Ins companies only paid 10 or 15 dollars.
Yep, it's a racket. I just went to pick up my RA medication. The doc ordered a 5ML bottle of injectable Methotrexate for me. The pharmacy only had 10ML bottles. The insurance company wouldn't authorize it since the doc ordered 5ML.
Guess who paid out of pocket for her medicine? Yep, good ol' Micro.
My motto is round up the insurance companies and run them off a cliff.