November seems to develop into a not so lucky month for us. Last year we had a visit from the local tax office in order to check on some papers from our company. Back then we spent a terrible amount of time on double checking our entire bookkeeping in order to have really nothing wrong. In the end it worked out just fine but it was such an intense time that I still feel sick just thinking about it. But who would have thought that last years troubles were nothing compared to this year!
It all started that my dad lost on one eye nearly his entire vision. The Ophthalmologists quickly found out that something is growing behind his left eye so they scheduled some therapy involving injecting a medication for battling tumors into the eyeball. However at the same time my father’s home doctor got some worrying results from the latest blood test. So both matters combined forced the home doctor to send my father to the local hospital for some further “inspection”. He stayed for a couple of days and got everything checked out without any proper results. They decided that my father should come back two weeks later to check the blood again and compare it to the last results. Well during that new check up at the hospital my father called “Tell your mother that it will take a bit longer, they will take a sample of my bone marrow now”. Yeah you can guess my shock upon hearing that they even test the bone marrow which is never a good sign. After that test my father was sent home as the results would take over a week so he got a new appointment a week later (this Friday, the Black Friday…).
The week in which the new appointment was scheduled started right off the bat with a total disaster. In the morning after sending away some boxes and buying new stuff for the company my wife’s hand bag got stolen. We searched everywhere and later the bag was even found as someone had brought it to the nearby info desk. Yes the hand bag was found however everything inside was missing such as the wallet or the keys for our warehouse. Needless to say that in that wallet was pretty much our “existence” as my wife’s residence permit, German bank card, multiple Chinese bank cards (for the business to actually get money), health insurance cards of my wife and the kids and several hundred Euros were gone just like that. Not to mention that the wallet itself was something more pricey she got as a birthday present from me after Nathan was born. Yes, a really terrible mess for us and besides blocking all the cards, going to the police and apply for new documents we could do nothing. Guess we had it coming as we live in the unsafest city in all of Germany according to a new study!
The following day we had a craftsman at our place to see what he could do about our warehouse as we had no key anymore. After some work he managed to get us access again by drilling a hole into the gate and skillfully open with some rope the emergency opening mechanism. Now we thought we could get back to work but that would be just too easy. As just shortly after he left we wanted to get some work done and I tried to open the gate with the new rope mechanism and what else to expect than that the rope suddenly tore from the emergency opening mechanism and even kind of destroyed it entirely. So now we could definitely not get into the warehouse again! Next day (Wednesday) didn’t start much better as just minutes after Nathan had brushed his teeth in the bathroom the big mirror with lighting suddenly came crushing down shattering into million of pieces.
So Thursday came without any actual madness and the craftsman was able to get our gate working again through some unknown magic however now we have a huge whole in the gate and he promised to fix it in the next weeks. Even though we had no disaster on Thursday there was tension as we all waited for Friday to come and with it the results from the hospital regarding the latest blood tests and the bone marrow sample. I can say that my wife and I felt sick when driving with my father to the hospital. The appointment was at 10am but the doctor had no time till 11am so we waited in the Oncology ward for too long with many patients passing by and lowering our hopes. Then the doctor took us to his office and started right with that my father has indeed leukemia. But my father has still luck as he pretty much has the best possible form of leukemia which is called Chronic lymphocytic leukemia together with another form called Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia. These forms are progressing very slow and can be treated (yes, not cured as there is no cure) very well and people can expect a normal life expectancy with it. Usually they would not even treat my father yet as he is in the beginning stage but due to his eye they decided to start chemotherapy already next week for the next 6 months. This is all so my father would not lose his eye sight and regain most of what he had before. The problems with his eye are caused due to the “thick blood” with too many proteins so with the therapy his blood levels will be put into a more normal state resulting in his eyes getting back their proper blood supply.
Yes November has been really terrible and terrifying but we do hope now that all the bad luck is gone. We will manage over time to get over the stolen wallet and my father will have many more years to live. Sure next year we can’t take him to China as he will still have his Chemotherapy cycles but the 2020 will be a new year for him to travel with us. Right now we are just a bit exhausted but also happy how things turned out for my father. Who knows, perhaps the wallet or at least some cards might be found someday. It really seems that all bad luck comes in threes and sometimes really intense.
Did you had a week or month where everything went just wrong and nothing worked out?
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Crazy Chinese Family 