Good homes needed, but where to post?

[Snakeadelic]

Having developed an allergic, stress-catalyzed reaction with a high chance of shutting off my airway at random times and no time limit on relapses, I have to move because it is the tenants of 2 of the other 3 units in my building who shower me in allergens and stress me to the breaking point.  I spent half of yesterday, split across two visits, in the emergency room with massive angioedema--thankfully in my face, not my throat or my intestines (its other favorite vacation spots).  Angioedema prefers the throat to the other locations, cutting off airways at random times, and no one has yet said I won't be at risk of relapse for the rest of my life, only that it "may take several years" to stop if it does at all.

I won't be able to take much with me...I must leave behind my love and light of 11 years who is not allergic, our pets, my family's heirloom furniture, and...of course...all the rocks.

I have MANY rocks.  The ones I'm 100% sure of after taking all my meds are: dusty-raspberry-colored quartzite from the Bitterroot River, quartzites in other colors from other locations, MANY local southwestern Montana jaspers that are largely reds or greens, multicolored shale (tan, dark and light green, dark and light reddish-purplish, some calcite layering--stuff makes GREAT photo backdrops) from just west of Missoula, MT, and a multi-year rockpicking collection from Biggs Junction, Oregon that includes opalite, flint, rhyolite, jaspers, and some spectacular light-in-bright green amygdaloidal basalts along with "lava bomb" style bubbled basalt, much of which has assorted druzy shades lining the bubble vugs.

If anyone wants a look at samples I can definitely do that--just need to know the best section to post them in and which ones people want to see.  I can even start that post with an updated-as-I-go list of identified stones.

I also have other hobby items that might be of interest to friends or family y'all out there might have handy.  I'll be rehoming a MASSIVE stash of Magic: the Gathering collectible playing cards since I will have no one to play cards with and they're not good for solitaire games.  Not sure about books yet, but it's likely.  The only thing I won't be offering up is my enormous archive of photos showcasing minerals and rockhounding sites, as I have already promised that part of my photographic legacy to the Bitterroot Gem & Mineral Society because they have no resident photographer for club events OR mineral specimens. 

I'll be setting up an appointment tomorrow to get help finding a new place to live.  After that, if anyone here would like to adopt some rocks, sooner will be better than later because I have no idea how long this will take to get set up and figured out and I may have to put together a move in just a day or two.  It's a pretty sure bet once I move I won't have internet access any more, so when I have a due date on that I'll have my membership here closed to avoid cluttering the servers. 

As I have no access to PayPal due to my peculiar refusal to send them scans or photos of my driver's license AND social security card (despite having a verified-their-way bank account!) when they will not guarantee who has access to that information, I am not looking to SELL rocks.  They just can't go with me and my nearest and dearest aren't all that into rocks.  The only payment I'd ever be interested in is paying it forward by helping someone else you run across someday when they need it.

[vitzitziltecpatl]

So sorry to hear about this unbelievably devastating development in your life. Can only wish you the best in avoiding any more acute episodes as you make preparations for taking care of yourself in the future.

It seems impossible that our "advanced" medical technology can't offer a real remedy for so many conditions, but I guess the experts just aren't as advanced as they think they are.

Our thoughts will be with you.

[Debbie K]

I know it's none of my business, but is this your first case of angioedema? If it is, it many behoove you to store at least some of the really special things and see if you get better. On the other hand, I had an ex-boyfriend who couldn't be around old dust like you find in attics, and nothing he could take would work to help the severe asthma attack that would ensue.

I had something similar happen to me years ago with polymer clay. I was an instructor working with the stuff making a good living and it started to severely affect my kidneys. I got rid of all of it, I didn't want to end up on dialysis. It made me sad, but I'm a lot healthier since I quit it, but 18 years later I still have to go to the kidney doctor every 4 months for monitoring.

My thoughts are with you and I'm truly sorry that you are having the health issues you're having. I hope that you will feel better soon and the medications that they give you will work. Please let us know how you are doing.

Debbie K

[Snakeadelic]

Debbie, I got no problem talking medical :).  I've been a care provider, both paid and volunteer, for the last 30 years.  My sweetie and 1 of the other tenants in this 4-unit building are both disabled, as I am now myself, and I help both of them with what we used to call Activities of Daily Living--preparing food, getting dressed, the works.

Yep, first attack.  Did as much research as I could between naps and med doses.  I might never have a problem again, but since I've now gotten worse again after my downstairs neighbor did laundry and I had to walk through the allergen plume from her dryer vent, I'm not hopeful that this will be my ONLY attack.  The biggest concern is that allergens are no longer required to start this all over--stress can do it too, and we have a neighbor who likes to get drunk, scream at and hit his kid, and ignore the 10pm-8am noise curfew that is a clearly stated lease clause.  He's been here since March, and we think there are 4 adults, a baby, a half-time custody toddler with a horrible attitude problem, and maybe a couple pets, all in a 650-square-foot 2-bedroom upstairs unit with inferior insulation in the walls and floors.

Last night was massively stressful and I'm even worse than after the dryer plume, but I did find out my love will NOT stay here without me...so now instead of trying to find a new home for one person with minimal furniture, it's the whole household, cats included.  Indoor-ONLY cats who are nearly ten years old, poorly socialized, and have spent just over eight of those years in our current apartment.  There are no units in the 4 complexes I live in the middle of that will keep me away from people doused in the artificial scent products that are my worst allergy.

I feel your pain on polymer clay.  I was a sculptor for 19 years, making tiny animals out of Super Sculpey to set on shells and stones.  Now both of my ring and pinkie fingers are numb most of the time and I cannot hold the sculptures or the tools.  After an X-Ray, 2 MRIs (neck and brain) and an EMG (one of 2 medical tests that makes me cry) it was determined that there is absolutely no reason for this.  That was in 2009 and my fingers are still numb.  For the last couple of years, both hands also been just snapping open at random times, dropping whatever I happen to be doing.

My one worry about the corticosteroid solution is that every woman in my family responds to them the same way after a while...necrotic skin lesions (do NOT Google that if the term is unfamiliar--it means too long on the prednisone and my skin will literally rot off) and boy howdy after seeing my mom's condition this summer I do NOT wanna go there.  Despite the side effects she has to take prednisone for the rest of her life.

I've got about half a dozen calls to make when offices open today, trying to find both medical help and advocacy to either find a place or get the neighbors in line with "your (unladylike word here) is going to kill someone if you don't knock it off NOW."

Meantime, still need to know where to post rocks to go, since I'm not selling them...

[Debbie K]

Sounds like a place you really need to get away from. If stress can make this condition worse, de-stress your life. Honestly. And if you have somebody coming with you, your troubles are halved, not doubled. If I remember correctly from your posts, this neighbor situation has been ongoing for quite a while. You need to protect yourself and get out. Cut your losses and prepare for a better life. People like that don't change.

The EMG didn't make me cry; well, my eyes did water up, but when they did the last needle in the foot I did sit up and try to punch the tech. I tell folks if their doc says they may need an EMG, run. This test wasn't for the polymer clay. The polymer clay, either the PVC's or the plastisizers, went directly to my kidneys, for some reason. Unbelievable that it is called "non-toxic".

Regarding the rocks: Is there some place where you can donate them locally? Shipping them all around the country would get really pricey. Or alternatively, do you know someone who has a yard where you could put them around a pond or in a corner. It seems to me that the last thing you need right now is the worry about trying to mail them.

Keep us posted on your progress and let us know where you end up. I'm sure wherever you go you'll have internet access so keep in touch.

Debbie K

[Hummingbirdstones]

I would put them either in Rough on the Bench or in the Shop and Swap category (even though you are giving them away).  There's no specific category for giving rocks away, so pick whichever you like.

I truly hope you get some relief from all of your medical problems and ignorant neighbors.  Sending up prayers for your healing.  Please do keep in touch and let us know how you're getting on.

[Ranger_Dave]

One possible way would be to get some of those flat rate boxes at the post office. You can get up to 20 pounds in them. A large one costs $17.90. I'd send you $20 for a mystery box.

[Snakeadelic]

Dave, that is an AWESOME reminder!  Heck, you don't even have to pay for flat-rate priority boxes until you ship them!  I'll pick some up just as soon as I can zip by our post office.  Some of my rocks are really big (I have a jasper-flint-wtf from Biggs Junction that's bigger than my head) but many of them could be packed into assorted sizes of priority box.

Hummingbirdstones, I've got pics of many and will find the best specimens to put up in both locations.  I have a gorgeous hunk of rhyolite with landscape jasper patterning in it, also Biggs Junction, that should be suitable for a solo offer to start with, and it's already photo'd both wet and dry.

Updates on the home front:  my counselor is horrified at the thought that we might not be regarded as priceless around here for our consistency and will be seeing me weekly until this mess sorts out.  She says if she thinks of or finds out about anything I'm not already doing or setting up she'll write it down to make sure she doesn't forget.  I was able to give my psychiatric-med prescriber a heads-up before our appointment this week, too.

My MD actually wrote a prescription stating that if my exposure to stress and known allergens is not reduced I will have to leave this set of 4 apartment complexes completely for my own safety, which I'll be presenting to my landlady in about half an hour along with photos of my face from this weekend.  (It was super GRODY, I assure you!)  I also get to tell her that if my sweetie and I are forced to leave she will also lose the fella I take care of at night, who would rather figure out how to move with no money, a truck and a Harley trike, and severe lease-breaking penalties than see me lose access to transportation and himself lose access to my 30 years of providing in-home care to the medically broken.  Sad as it may sound, this is the best my self esteem has been since my second marriage, when the man who made so sure to say he loved me EVERY day for 18 months stopped the moment I needed him to help me instead of his boss (we lived where he worked).

We know the landlady will want to help us, but the problem is it's not her decision.  That belongs to a corporate consortium of total strangers in another time zone, and they might want to keep up the high turnover since the move-out standards are ludicrously high and almost no one ever gets their security deposit back.  We're hoping that maybe the problem tenant downstairs will be allowed to swap units with the one I take care of, which would solve the problem of a dryer vent spewing poison from under my front door AND put all the tenants who get complained about on one side of the building and all the ones who don't on the other!  Another neighbor tried to get the upstairs unit currently over-occupied by child abusers (if you get drunk, scream f-bombs at your toddler after the noise curfew AND THEN smack them around for still crying, YOU ARE A CHILD ABUSER in my book and I don't even like kids) about three tenants ago and was told he'd be charged $800 in move-in costs to swap from the 4-unit building right next to us, so maybe 'reasonable' isn't any of the owners' middle names. 

My chin is up, my fingers are crossed, and I have a growing backlog of medical and mental health professionals quite willing to say that my sweetie and I are NOT the problem here.

Prayers to anyone and assorted well-wishings are hugely appreciated!  After I deal with the landlady, I think it's gonna be time to dig in my rock stock and image archives :D.  My OCD actually loves that kind of thing, which is a great stroke of luck!

[Ranger_Dave]

When you get a box ready, send it. I'll PM you my address. I'm always looking for new cabbing material. Fluorescent specimens welcome too.

[redrockrods]

Having developed an allergic, stress-catalyzed reaction with a high chance of shutting off my airway at random times and no time limit on relapses, I have to move because it is the tenants of 2 of the other 3 units in my building who shower me in allergens and stress me to the breaking point.  I spent half of yesterday, split across two visits, in the emergency room with massive angioedema--thankfully in my face, not my throat or my intestines (its other favorite vacation spots).  Angioedema prefers the throat to the other locations, cutting off airways at random times, and no one has yet said I won't be at risk of relapse for the rest of my life, only that it "may take several years" to stop if it does at all.

I won't be able to take much with me...I must leave behind my love and light of 11 years who is not allergic, our pets, my family's heirloom furniture, and...of course...all the rocks.

I have MANY rocks.  The ones I'm 100% sure of after taking all my meds are: dusty-raspberry-colored quartzite from the Bitterroot River, quartzites in other colors from other locations, MANY local southwestern Montana jaspers that are largely reds or greens, multicolored shale (tan, dark and light green, dark and light reddish-purplish, some calcite layering--stuff makes GREAT photo backdrops) from just west of Missoula, MT, and a multi-year rockpicking collection from Biggs Junction, Oregon that includes opalite, flint, rhyolite, jaspers, and some spectacular light-in-bright green amygdaloidal basalts along with "lava bomb" style bubbled basalt, much of which has assorted druzy shades lining the bubble vugs.

If anyone wants a look at samples I can definitely do that--just need to know the best section to post them in and which ones people want to see.  I can even start that post with an updated-as-I-go list of identified stones.

I also have other hobby items that might be of interest to friends or family y'all out there might have handy.  I'll be rehoming a MASSIVE stash of Magic: the Gathering collectible playing cards since I will have no one to play cards with and they're not good for solitaire games.  Not sure about books yet, but it's likely.  The only thing I won't be offering up is my enormous archive of photos showcasing minerals and rockhounding sites, as I have already promised that part of my photographic legacy to the Bitterroot Gem & Mineral Society because they have no resident photographer for club events OR mineral specimens. 

I'll be setting up an appointment tomorrow to get help finding a new place to live.  After that, if anyone here would like to adopt some rocks, sooner will be better than later because I have no idea how long this will take to get set up and figured out and I may have to put together a move in just a day or two.  It's a pretty sure bet once I move I won't have internet access any more, so when I have a due date on that I'll have my membership here closed to avoid cluttering the servers. 

As I have no access to PayPal due to my peculiar refusal to send them scans or photos of my driver's license AND social security card (despite having a verified-their-way bank account!) when they will not guarantee who has access to that information, I am not looking to SELL rocks.  They just can't go with me and my nearest and dearest aren't all that into rocks.  The only payment I'd ever be interested in is paying it forward by helping someone else you run across someday when they need it.

I'd be willing to give your MTG cards a good home. I'm an avid player.

[Hummingbirdstones]

Snakeadelic -- what state are you in?

[tkcaz]

I am so sorry to hear about your situation, it sounds like an awful predicament.  I hope you find some answers soon.

The mineral club near me (Phoenix) uses all kinds of minerals and rocks to build educational sets for teaching earth sciences in grade school.  Maybe there is something similar near you?

The same club has also organized occasional local "clearance sales" for collectors in similar circumstances, would that be an option for you?

[Snakeadelic]

First of all...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

No matter which ones you celebrate or how :D.

As for the downstairs neighbor, no, people like that do not change :(.  3 consecutive on-site managers have asked her to stop dousing me in poison and the best response to date has been a grudging "I'll consider it."  HOWEVER, since the manager is severely annoyed that she is not allowed to insist I be treated with a modicum of respect, other plans are under way. 

First will be a physical shunt that the maintenance staff will be building and attaching to her dryer vent to force the fumes toward the parking lot--well away from my door.  Second, after the holidays I will be back in the case load of an adult mental health case manager I've known and worked with almost since I moved to Montana 11 years ago who is a powerful advocate with immense knowledge of community resources. 

Third, the people in the other upstairs unit (drunken kid-slappin f-bomb fratboy and whoever else) will NOT be offered a renewal on their lease this coming spring and the manager HAS been told that we can lay claim to that unit, which is a mirror image of the one I live in now.  They're even waiving most if not all of the fees associated with swapping units (the fella I take care of at night used to live at the other end of the parking lot but we got to move him over the same way several years back).  This means that the dryer vent underneath my front door will be from MY laundry machines!  They live downstairs with Limpy the Wonder Biker--his feet are actually on almost sideways due to cerebral palsy and other health adventures--and he uses unscented everything for his own health's sake already.  I've been doing his laundry for like 6 years and the worst I ever react is if I handle his anti-static-sheet-treated laundry fresh out of the dryer is a slight and very temporary rash if I'm sweating where I come in contact with the treated cloth on bare skin.

As for rocks and MtG cards, those collections will still be getting reduced even if we only have to move like 50 feet to the west.  Tomorrow I'll continue gathering and sorting stones with the hope of starting shipping VERY early in January.  The Bitterroot Gem & Mineral Society holds a little auction at the end of each meeting, and I'll definitely be sending some stuff that way.  It helps pay for the insurance during the field trips, the annual show (last year we had an Ethiopian fella with trays of Welos!!!), and all the club's other activities and expenses.  Since they also get my entire relevant photo legacy of large geological formations, collecting locations, specimens I've found, and specimens I either bought or was given, most of the "to go" rocks will be headed elsewhere.  It's not like the club will mind, since they have no one else currently who takes photos of trips, meetings, the show, etc!

Hummingbirdstones, I have the great good fortune to live in the Bitterroot Valley in southwestern Montana.  The very first time I got out of a car and put my shoes on Montana dirt, I was nearly overwhelmed by a feeling best described as my heart's home saying "Well THERE you are!  What took so long?"  I was born in Portland, OR, and other than the year I turned 4 while we briefly lived in Orlando, FL, I spent the first 34 years of my life between the Cascades and the beach, but it turns out Montana truly is my home.  I thought I would miss the ocean more, really :).  The one thing I could probably never do now is live somewhere flat and/or without forests.

Debbie, OMG I am so sorry you had to have an EMG in your foot!  My first was my lumbar spine & upper legs and the second was my left arm.  The neurologist who did the second was a paragon of mercy--he started with my stupid hand and when nothing turned up he declined to put my dominant hand through the same pain.  We did learn that country music makes me nervous; every time he actually hit the nerve pathways he was looking for, the little static machine started tuning in a country station!  My toes appear to be connected directly to my fight-or-flight reflex and I can't begin to estimate how many doctors over the years have narrowly missed getting kicked in the face for grabbing a toe without permission.  I tell folks if they're unfamiliar with the acronym that EMGs are a great hobby if you're into needles and electricity, and most of them turn kinda green.  I never had any obvious health problems dealing with Sculpey, Super Sculpey, or Sculpey III and I rarely used Fimo because it's too stiff for the way I worked, but now that I've heard any bit of your story I'm way less likely to pick the stuff up again even if anyone ever does figure out why both of my ring and pinkie fingers are largely numb and have been for almost 6 years.

So, in between bouts of dinner prep today, I shall be futzing about (as the biker says) with sorting rocks and cards to be shipped out.  Meanwhile, since I made out like a TOTAL bandit as far as Christmas presents, I'm gonna go start a thread and see if anyone else wants to jabber about what they got!   

[Hummingbirdstones]

Merry Christmas!

I'm so glad there are some solutions coming your way for your living arrangements.

May your new year be spectacular!

[Snakeadelic]

At this point I'll settle for a decent new year!

Still waiting on case management, probably until next week.  It's pretty much impossible for me to talk to my partner of 12 years about this whole mess without triggering his HUGE anger management issues--a thing I am blessed to have very rarely had to see in full flare.  Last I was sure of, he does NOT want to move and he does NOT want to live without me in the same airspace.  I'm hoping a tag-team of adult case managers (his of many years, mine the one I'll be returning to when she's back in the office) can explain to him that he cannot have both.  I'm also planning to ask the case managers to sit down with the landlady for an explanation of why the child-abusing poisoner downstairs gets ALL the legal protection here.

I should be able to start assembling outgoing boxes of rocks next week!  :)  There is a weight limit on Priority boxes, so I'll likely start with smaller ones to make sure I don't go over.

Christmas Day was fabulous, a welcome breath of loving family time amid the wreckage of my year.  Fingers crossed & prayers lofted for a solution that doesn't cost me my home, my partners, and my pets.  Ppl around town who know my face often say "hang in there", to which my standard response remains "Tooth and nail, baby, tooth and nail!"