my story

Please allow me to introduce myself  . . .

I'm an old Hippie impoverished by having two special needs kids.


First born was unplanned, needed three procedures for hip  dysplasia by age six and spent months encased  in increasingly foul hip spica casts.    Their medical care cost $100,000.  Caring for them drained thousands of dollars from my transcription production each month.  I was a wfh medical transcriptionist long before covid.

My second child was a 27-week preemie born after a LEEP for cervical cancer.  Having them cost $1/4 million.  We both got pneumonia from an admission for unsuccessful tocolysis so from my womb D was untimely amniotomed. He spent ten weeks in the NICU.    The three hours a day I spent walking to the hospital to deliver pumped breastmilk and give D two hours of kangaroo care {skin-to-skin cuddling} cost me thousands of dollars of lost income during the ten-week stay. 

We moved to Eugene in 2001, fleeing high northern California rents.  My artist sister told us about the Whitaker, which they called the anarchist district.

We settled into the Best Value Inn and I had a massive AVM bleed while transcribing.

After transcribing for twenty years, I knew the intensely nauseating thunderclap headache meant my brain was bleeding.  Ran to the bathroom to barf, forgot how doorknobs worked and woke up a week later as Moaning Myrtle's roommate at the local PeaceHealth.  Myrt had painful skin breakdown from a colostomy.

I was discharged to the street at 1am and had to ask a woman on the street to call my partner.  We slept in the parking garage for a week, keeping in touch with social workers arranging aneurysm surgery at OHSU and making biweekly calls to inch along the transitional housing wait list.  After East Blair Coop gave us our first break we've been stably housed.

The French Quarter.  Our neihhbors had a "No Tweakers" sign onn theor door and a sready steam of 2am traffic.

Polk Plaza suited us until roof repairs raised the rent.   

The President at 6th and Tyler..  We missed a Section 8 deadline. Emerald was the only company to return our call so here we are.  Moved in a snowstorm.   It was filthy on move-in and hasn't improved . The stairs will do me in.

At least our neighbors dont complain about our moans of pleasure.