Letters from Main Street

February 2009

Custom Search

7/16/2009
Hello,
I am a mother of 4 my children's ages are 5y 3 1/2y 2y and 11 months and I am 13 weeks along
with another baby.
our landlord went bankrupt and we have to be out of our home as of Friday...yes tomorrow!
we have asked 6 pages of churches for help and all the help centers in Columbia Fulton and
surrounding areas.
we can't find any help

if you think you could help us out with a hotel stay or anything else that'd be great

thank you
janie and family

February 2009

Up until a few weeks ago I led a very laid back life. Nothing fancy. Just getting up and going to
work.

Let's go back a year ago. As the economy started to get sicker and sicker I knew the construction
business I was working for would be going under soon and I would not be able to pay my bills if I
didn't make a change. In March of 2008 I went back to work in the Automotive Industry. Little did I
know this was the next business to take a nose dive.

Just being happy to have a job I took myself back and forth everyday saying the strong will survive.
I tried hard to stay away from the negative conversations that office workers talk about and
concentrate on things getting better.

Each day I went into the office with the best attitude I could muster up and set out to do what I was
there for. Sale cars. Car sales at this point where dropping as fast as the construction business I
had just left.

Just one more month I kept telling myself. Just one more month. I had such high hopes sales
would rebound and knew I could make it.

Meanwhile back at the ranch my old man still had no job. He actually worked for the construction
company too. In late April maybe May he got on with Image staffing company for a temp to hire job.
This was a night job and not that easy but, it was money coming in. Not what we were use to but,
it was helping pay the bills that were already behind.

Then one day on my off day he comes rolling up early. This can't be good I thought. It wasn't. He
was let go before he was hired full time. At the time it was his vision problem they stated but, each
week that went by more and more people were let go. Even with corrective lenses he would not
have gotten hired full time.

He asked about the Unemployment benefits and they told him he did not qualify because he was
working for a temporary agency.

In September he finally got on with another company that took him out of state . This was another
construction company that remodels retail stores in the malls all over the country. Guess what?
The retail market was crumbling and this job lasted 3 weeks.

After talking to friends and colleges who where loosing their jobs left and right I went back to my
old man and pleaded with him to try to at least apply for unemployment.

He did and the first part of January 2009 he finally got his first unemployment check.
Lesson learned. Always ask yourself. Had he went on what the staffing company told him he
would have not gotten help. They tried to dispute it stating he quit. He had been dismissed by a
doctor and the facts were facts.

Needless to say work and money on my end was not getting any better but, what am I to do. I look
around and every industry is going under. I have been doing the same thing for 16 years and
where would I go and what could I do. Also not to mention I had seen too many employees come
and go where I was and other stores to know last one in first one out is usually the rule. Why
should I change jobs for an even more uncertain one.

Sometimes even though things seem hard, I have learned to listen to that quite voice in my head
that tells me what to do. Still dragging myself into work everyday hoping for that big sale would
come across and save my house and catch up the bills. NO matter how hard I tried and no matter
what I did I just got weaker and weaker. My mind was sharp but my body was getting tired.

I had a small pimple like bump on the outside of my vaginal area I thought was an ingrown hair or
a pimple. I tried to treat it with over the counter medicines. After a while it got larger and was
becoming uncomfortable to sit on. In my line of work I have to go on test drives which means
sitting. There is not a lot of standing to my job besides greeting the customer and getting keys.

By this time the work we had done to get the house out of foreclosure was getting behind again.
Money I had borrowed back in February 2008 to save our house was not being paid back. Brian
still had no luck finding a job and I was getting weaker.

No matter how hard I tried the pain was to great and the ability to get up and go was fading fast. I
was stressed, fatigued and loosing weight fast. When I got down to 100 lbs knowing my usual
weight was around 120 to 140 I stopped.

Not wanting to spend the $40.00 co pay that could feed us for a week I bit the bullet. I sat Brian
down Friday morning January the 9th and told him what I was going through. I called the doctor
and got an appointment for Monday the 12th.

You could have heard a feather hit the floor in that room when she looked in my eyes. She told me
she wanted to do blood tests and chest ex rays. My weight lose concerned her also.

I was sent from there to a gynecologists a few days later. He took biopsy's and sent me to a
cancer specialist.

I walked into the cancer center at Kennestone Hospital in Marietta Ga. on January the 20th, the day
President Obama was inaugurated. I stood and watched the inauguration in the very room I am
now taking chemo therapy in. This was just minutes before the doctor told me what I had. No, I
will never forget where I was and what I was doing the day President Oboma was inaugurated.