My father, John on the right and my uncle Mickey on the left.
Major worries and concerns growing in our family
For awhile now I have been doing all I can to avoid posting about the current stresses ongoing with our little tight nit family unit. Mainly due to the fact I just am too humbled to seek for help outside of myself by working for what I make in life. This is a quality deeply instilled in me due to the man that raised me and his father before him. We come from a very working class Irish-American family, from County Cork, Ireland to be exact a couple generations ago, so its ingrained from birth that the only right way to make it in this world is through dedication and work. There comes a time though when obstacles are so heavy in front of you that you sometimes have to suck it up and admit to yourself the only way to resolve the issues maybe through the help of others, its taken me a few weeks and a lot of new friends here in Steemit to grasp that but many have begun telling me to write what I am about to share openly with you in this post. I do hope you guys read this one completely because this is a bit more of a personal situation in my life that is wreaking havoc within my family bad.
My father, great man and silent giver to all
My father's name is John Flaherty, a very hard working man his whole life and actually spent many years of his youth over in Vietnam fighting for this country. My dad though is not a very political man, he mainly went due to the draft and due to a passion within himself to help others and defend the strangers in America that he considered family in the late 60s and well into the early to mid 1970s.
From there my father was an electronics engineer, working even in a few top secret programs with sub contractors that were building systems that ultimately landed in with NASA's usages. We don't know much about this side to his work, he has kept faithful to the system that national security was involved so as far as we know that is between him and his company.
Hard times hit though in the late 80s for my father. Dedication to his work did not pay off like it does for so many small timers working in government contracts, so he was laid off and its been up and down financially ever since. He ended up moving us to Florida when I was 10 from his home state of Connecticut and from there the constant attempts to rebuild a life for our family, including my little sister Kelli has been an up and down rollercoaster as it is for many Americans due to the way this country runs.
The present issue going on
To speed you up without a long day to day story about 70 years of my fathers life, we had a horrible bit of info come back from my fathers doctor at the local Veteran's hospital 2 years ago that my father carries with him 2 aortic aneurysms located near his stomach. The chances of the slightest jerk or movement could rupture this so he has been under the care of doctors at the local VA but still to this day the important surgery keeps being put off.
We have theories on this in my family, my dad is the silent type so he seriously does not feed us all the info out of pride but we suspect the reason in the last 2 years he has not been into surgery could be due to insurance and lack there of for men in the VA system so they keep putting him off. While this is going on my dad had to take a forced retirement so to make matters worse he is now stuck providing income via Social Security checks which is sinking them even more in debt than ever before....good old America looking out for the guys they put in harms way as usual.
Today I got a jist of the situation in passing that my father is risking his life due to finances. He is too proud to fully say it but today their fridge just went on the fritz and through stressful worries I found out how seriously in debt they are and this is creating a perfect storm of him putting his health issues off. I am personally as well in a rebuild issue in life and my sister just got through a serious divorce so we are all stressing out in the family trying to figure out what to do so my dad can unburden himself of this needless putting off of such an important surgery to save his life.
Doctors have told my mom that he is a literal walking time bomb, and this was over a year ago so how he is still moving around in the pain I catch him in is beyond me. Definitely a humble tough guy never wanting anyone to put themselves out for you him but I think its time I try to take a little charge in the family on this and seek help.
I am going to try to put aside funds I earn from this here to help them, kind of surprise them with a sum as fast as I can to hopefully get him to afford the simplistic and most important thing a human deserves and that is a healthy life after so many years of service to his family and to his country. But I am not with a lot, this is part of the reason those with my Steemit Blogger Central project see me so determined to work 16 hour days, just so I can get ahead to help others and also to help my family out.
I hate to beg or ask for help but if you could maybe pass this around so we can use this post to at the very minimum raise enough to help my parents get a fridge would be sweet, can't expect the community to pay for everything but a boost towards them to not stress as we sort this issues with his needed surgery could go a long way. Stress is bad for aneurysms and right now that is worrying me and my mom here.
Thoughs that know me know this post was not easy for me to write up but I am feeling very up against the wall on this one, this man has put up with a lot of my shit as a wild kid, has always been there for me through anything I done in life and I really want to give him some quality to his life as swiftly as I can. The man is my hero, always has been even if he doesn't see that daily out of me, the suffering right now I see him deal with is just not fair.
This just further divides me from this US Government, you would think they would better take care of those under their Veteran's funded budgets but they don't. I been to that hospital with him numerous times and its a madhouse of inanities how many people sit there all day like they don't matter. I truly hope in crypto we form something better even in health care because the way its being done, its not right!
If you can please upvote, I am going to take what comes at this to put on a card for my parents to catch up their bills so he can focus on his health and stop being stubborn about it. I thank all of you that take the time to read this and those that help, at the very least send a few prayers to our family, its been an ongoing rough time and we could use the break.