Monday, May 28, 2018

plus one

During Spring break, the week before Easter for us, Lily received a text from her bestie that went something like this: I'm with my mum at work and one side of her face has gone all droopy and she can't move one side of her body, what should I do.  Thankfully Lily knew what to tell her to do and after quite a production the woman went to hospital.

Since the stroke righted itself they decided to run a whole lot of tests since the mum had been suffering severe back pain for a while which was why K was with her at work, to help. Tests revealed advanced stage, aggressive metastatic breast cancer. The pain in her back was caused by the cancer there.

Oh my.

This is where the story gets very long and complicated. Choices had to be made and the mother decided to move to South Carolina so that she could live with her other much much older  daughter and receive treatment there. But what about K? K is 16, just and in a veterinary program at a magnet school and starting SAS with Lily in August. Her family has nothing, NOTHING, its very sad. They aren't close either and the more the story unfolded the worse it got and the madder I got.

So we made a decision to allow K to move in with us but that had to be done somewhat legally without me becoming a legal guardian. Papers were drawn up and her mother signed her over...literally. She never came into my house to see where she would be living and she never spoke to me, she only speaks Spanish. I can natter in Spanish but cannot hold legal conversations in it. K arrived the next day, April 24th with a small duffel and a cardboard box, her worldly possessions inside the 2.  Everything else was donated, or throw away.

When the mum was in hospital here no other family members came, NONE. This 16 yr old would leave school, go to visit her mum, leave at 10.30 at night and go to her house and sleep. I wasn't happy but I didn't know the whole story, now I do and I am furious.

K has 4 siblings and they all can't be bothered and K is a burden to the family. That was the word used by her aunt. When it came time for K to say goodbye to her mum everyone fought so as not to have to pay her fare. They asked her to find her own transportation and that's when I stepped in and told them NO. A 16 yr old female is NOT travelling for 16 hours alone on a train and forget about the bus it just wasn't going to happen.  She left last Monday, I withdrew her from school as it was my understanding her mum was nearing the end. Now I fear that the older sister basically wanted her very own Cinderella.

It wasn't easy having her here, she was raised by people very different than those who raised me and it was challenging. When I asked her if she wanted me in her corner with regard to her family she said she did so I took a stand and they gave her so much grief and I was so disgusted that I decided to speak up. She wants to come back after her mum dies but I am not sure if the sister will permit it. She certainly won't pay for it.

So things here are busy, complicated and nutty. Oh and I am in school fulltime, Im not taking any time off.

Each day I text her and each day the text starts like this:  Hi Cinderelly, you ok?

I fialed to mention her father died of cancer when she was 7. Basically her life sucks donkey balls.

2 comments:

  1. Dawn that is such a sad story & no child should have to go through something like this alone. Thank god she has you in her corner. I know you will do everything you can for her & hope things work out. Hugs

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  2. There are just no words. This poor, poor child. I'm so glad she has you to lean on.

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