Month: January 2023

I do this reluctantly, but:

Since I last spoke with you, my Aunt Annie has been hospitalized again, and has come home with a stomach bug. We are “underwater” as far as paying our bills this month, in no small part due to blog expenses that I cannot pay while I’m not working, and on top of that, we need to buy some medical equipment to help AA out.

I have a GoFundMe up here (https://www.gofundme.com/manage/wt4t5h-george-and-anne-malik), and if there is any way that you are able to lend a couple of bucks, we’re in a time of pretty desperate need.

Thanks.

Hi, everybody. It’s been a LONG time since I last updated you on the state of the blog, and it’s time to do so again.

I apologize for the lack of posts over the last couple of months. Aunt Annie and I have been dealing with our post-medical adventures life, which has involved a lot of unpacking of the events that took place for AA (who likened her emotions to PTSD), some depression and anxiety for me, and financial stress on top of it all…

But we’ve gotten through with the support of family and friends, both online and “IRL,” and many of you know that I’m at least trying to show up for Red Wings games on Twitter.

Right now, Aunt Annie is having some complications due to her congestive heart failure (again, “heart failure” is a very liveable-withable condition, which still surprises me) that we’re trying to sort out. It’s taken a significantly longer period of time to get her sleepiness diagnosed, and it’s been very stressful to care for her while worrying about her so very much…

So yes, part of me wants to come back to work, and come back to work badly; I miss covering the Red Wings and their hockey world, I miss talking to you, and I miss writing for a living. My blogging job is stressful some times, too, but it’s also fun. It is still my intention to restart The Malik Report, and I owe those of you who have supported the blog a damn hard effort at achieving that goal.

The other part of me wants to see some sort of resolution to figuring out what the flying flurk is going on with my aunt’s health first, and we don’t have a definite timeline as to when things will get sorted out.

It’s scary when a loved one is having new chronic health issues, and neither you nor your physicians quite know why they are happening. It’s stressful, it wrecks your attention span (an attention span is necessary to be a blogger), and it drains your energy reserves.

It also sparks ye olde anxiety and depression, too, and as we’ve faced some rough times without the income that the blog generates (it ain’t much, but something is still something), I’ve had a rough go there from time to time.

So the household remains in flux health-wise. My chronic health conditions are liveable-withable, and my aunt’s chronic health conditions are, when controlled, liveable-withable, so there should be no reason, long term, for TMR to not resume normal functioning.

But we aren’t in that spot yet. So we’re going to get her out of, “This is scary and we don’t know why it’s happening” territory, and then I’ll get my butt back to work.