I’ve been disabled for almost twenty years now, ever since a long fall military diving training messed up my nervous system (and immune system along with it). For the last couple of months I’ve been constantly ill. If the kids cough, I spend three days throwing up. Worst still, these maladies are overlapping, eroding my underlying health and aggravating my disability.

While all this is going on, my wife is striving against incredible pressure from work (she’s amazing), the kids are dealing with all the changes that happen when you’re 2, 4 and 6, and you need you parents close by, and I am trying to take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime by writing a book specifically requested by a client (alongside a sci-fi novel, a research project and trying to keep my radio production company alive.)

Not to put to fine a point on it, and with all the damage to my enormous masculine pride admitting it entails, I’m not coping. So what should I do? What should any of us do, fighting to manage our lives while the world goes crazy around us?

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