silver linings are a myth

So here I am thinking to myself "Damn- two gravely ill relatives- gotta keep a positive attitude for those around me. They will need my support." It all sounds well and good... and not too over the top. Seems karma disagrees with my "keep-it-together attitude" and has been doing its best to get me down. Now I know I was only going to focus on our fertility journey here, but I feel the course of events is relevant and necessary to mention. I want to list the last several weeks worth of events in order to be able to find the positives that may come out of this cluster of a mess:

1. Jeff's uncle (on his mother's side) was diagnosed with end stage esophogeal cancer with a prognosis of 1 year just a month ago. He is not responding to chemo and now has a prognosis of no more than this Thanksgiving.
2. Jeff's uncle (on his father's side) ends up going to the doctor who never calls him back to say they believe he has pneumonia. By the time he has his follow up appointment, he needs to be hospitalized where they find it is not pneumonia at all... but a failing heart valve-which they cannot operate on due to his liver thinning his blood too much. His lungs are filling with fluid from the bad heart and will continue to fill since they cannot repair the problem. They place him in a nursing home where his prognosis is unknown, but very limited.

Those events were by far the most devastating, but I did my best to keep composed. Then the smaller hits started coming in:

1. Our first failed IUI
2. Our little chihuahua needed immediate medical attention from what we believe is a strained back that rendered her a crying mess on the dining room floor. And as usual, when calling our local vet, they were not available to see any animals as they were at a conference. So off to the emergency vet for an incredibly expensive visit where they did not know what the problem was, but now she is a drugged up little dog who has been sleeping for the last 48 hours.
3. Jeff had to leave for a business trip this week and on this trip he has had to share a hotel room with a complete stranger that works for the same company, but a different location, and is now coming down with an unexplained illness.
4. My job will no longer be as of the end of this week with the closing of the company.
5. Our insurance will no longer be due to the closing of the company.
6. My laparoscopy will still happen, but will be the final hurrah in the attempt to assist our fertility until I can get a new insurance plan.
7. Jeff has learned he has low testosterone which may be a factor as well in our fertility. Prognosis for that is not so hot either. He cannot simply take testosterone. It will raise the levels, but odds are it will also lower his sperm count-possibly to zero. There needs to be another way out there, but it seems nothing has been proven. Now on top of the uncertainty, we need to figure out how to address this issue with no insurance.
8. The IRS decided that, even though we are working on fixing a mix-up when we moved out of state, they still wanted their money... so they went ahead and simply took it out of our bank account. We live paycheck to paycheck like many people do right now and that just doesn't matter.Who needs to eat anyway right? What is our measly $388 dollars going to do in the grand scheme of the how many trillion dollar debt the government has? The colorful words I want to use are simply not appropriate for this blog, but believe me, I am thinking them!
   

So somewhere in here is supposed to be a silver lining... a reason all these challenges have been presented to me. Should I embrace these challenges and do something amazing? Or should I take the less difficult path of hiding under the covers and not coming out until it is all over? I like the hiding part... but I know it is just unrealistic. It is so hard to continue to be composed. It feels like the world is crumbling below my feet and I just can't move fast enough to keep a steady footing. My next post will be to take this list of crappy events and see if there is in fact a silver lining. I am sure there is, but with all the B.S. piled on it, I am just going to have to work really hard to find it.