Friday 15 April 2016

The last few months were eventful...

Done the bone marrow donation, I'll never ever again trust a doctor who says there is some discomfort involved, what they mean is pain, though it's over really quick, it was more the shock of expecting a bit of discomfort. Afterwards a bit of sickness but again, not a bad trade off for a life.

After I was back, there was a hell lot to do, then one of the dogs was badly bitten and after the surgery (they had to remove a tooth as the bite damaged the root of the tooth) he kept limping, on and off for weeks, vet thought a slipped disk, turned out being a massive tumor inside his spine, basically bone marrow cancer. We were gutted and did the right thing, we let him go gently before he started to suffer, he went with a belly full of all his favorite foods and I was blubbling like a baby at the vets. The other 2 dogs, the girl took it badly, even months later she's still searching for him and even one of the cats sometimes looks for his friend...

A few weeks after that a rescue called us, if we could take in a puppy, already had 4 or 5 homes, we decided to foster (he's now a failed foster) but damned, we expected a puppy Dobie and not a dog the size of a horse and growing. Due to having spent his previous 10 months just in cages, he was absolutely hyper, also had no training. I lost quite a bit of size...

A month ago, taking the dogs out, they found a homeless guy who was near fainting from hunger and cold, his hands were badly infected, he tried to find shelter and touched fiber glass, dragged him home and he's in our guest room, that's how I became aware of the massive massive problem with homelessness we have in the UK. V is healing nicely, mentally and physically and we are trying to get him back into the system. The system is fucked up, he got injured while working, then lost the job as he couldn't work, couldn't pay his rent, lost the flat, had no address so didn't get the letters and they just took him off benefits, he lived on the streets for 3 years and survived by dumpster diving. Super nice guy who's great helping me with the dogs and started to do little DIY projects we had put off and off due to a busy work life and maybe general laziness.

I tweeted a bit about him, since I wasn't aware of the problem, I thought others also might not know how bad it is or how easy it is to fall through the cracks of the UK system, I found a blog of a guy who's homeless in another part of the country and blogs from the library or the homeless drop in. It's worth a read

https://homelessandsad.wordpress.com/

He's done a fund raiser and with a few friends we decided that this weekend we will ask everybody to maybe have one drink less (liver and head will thank you) and donate the money to his fund, so he can rent a place and gets off the streets and from there on can get a job again, he's willing to do just about anything but without an address and obviously being homeless, not a chance.

In case you want to join in (doesn't matter how little, he's so happy about people caring) I'll give you that link too, if you don't even have $5, then please do share the link and make people aware!

https://www.generosity.com/community-fundraising/desperately-need-help--3

Thanks for reading!