Fallout of monumental proportions

This gets very complicated, so bear with me.

Pint had a meltdown. Here is why, and also why I hate drugs.

Pint's dad, Loser. Had 2 kids to Pint's Mom, Calamity.

Then got hooked up with 2^nd relationship,Trailer Trash. Had THREE more kids to TT. Girl, age 7, Boy age 5 and Girl, age 3.

Loser and TT have since lost custody of those three kids due to (you guessed it) addiction and multiple incarcerations.

Loser is now split up from TT and incarcerated BUT, before he became incarcerated, he hooked up with Red Honda Girl, and was running drugs from Texas to WV in the red honda. Oh, and they also became poly abusers, and are now CRACK addicts. AND, she is pregnant with yet ANOTHER baby in the family.

Meanwhile, Calamity went on after the divorce, to have ¼ Pint, who is now 4 ½ years old, but very small and basically has stunted growth.

Pint and ½ Pint both have a severe and rare form of a bleeding disorder called Von Willebrands, Type II M. The rarity of it is that with 7 BILLION people on the planet, less than 100 Million of them would have this type. That is about 1 ½ percent of the population.

¾ Pint has a gastrointestinal disease.

Segue for a second. Pint and ½ Pints OTHER grandparents live down the street from us. These are Loser's parents. Loser has a sister Desperate, who also had a kid, and (again, you guessed it) is also a junkie, involved with a junkie. The kid is 10 years old, a boy. And guess what? CPS took the kid away from the parents and gave him to the grandparents. So Pint and ½ Pint are growing up with their other cousin who lives down the street. Nice for them and we like it.

However, THAT being said, LL, the cousin was involved in a motor vehicle accident with his mother before he was removed and which resulted in head trauma. That led to a growth, a type of non cancerous tumor, which is great that it is non cancerous, but it is also GROWING and the Chemo isn't shrinking it. The tumor involves the optic nerves and the poor kid is now totally blind in one eye and going blind in the other. And, unless they can find a way to make the tumor shrink, (it is non-operable), the kid is going to die. There is only so much room inside a skull.

So we have Pint. She worries about ¼ Pint being so little, and Calamity not taking care of her. We have the other three, who are in the custody of CPS (and 6 hours away) and currently placed with TT's mother, about whom we know absolutely nothing. She worries constantly that they are in danger, that they don't know they have other sisters who love them, that they will not have good role models. We haven't told her yet and probably will NEVER tell her that RHG is pregnant with yet another addicted sibling of hers.

½ Pint, in addition to being born addicted to heroin, has a brain cyst along with the bleeding disease.

So there is Pint, the oldest. And she is worried about...

½ Pint and her brain cyst and what if it starts growing? (there is no way to drain it, it is in an unreachable part of the brain, we have already been told this).

¾ Pint, her cousin who also lives with us and cannot digest food, and what if her medication stops working? (a distinct possibility there is a family friend who has the same thing, is 34 years old and on her SECOND five organ transplant and is only 73 pounds. She will probably die from Gastroparesis before she is 40.

LL the other cousin, who has the brain tumor that is not shrinking and is going blind.

LL's grandparents (the girl's other grands) the Grandma who is an epileptic, the grandfather who is a recovering alcoholic.

The other sibs who she knows very little about except that they are probably in a bad situation and there is nothing she can do to 'be there for them', and they are little and she KNOWS what they are going through because SHE remembers. ½ Pint does not remember because I took her at 3 days. Pint, she remembers it all.

Then add in a grandfather who is totally disabled (my dear husband) a grandmother (that would be me) who smokes too much and is stressed a lot and has already had one heart attack (I didn't even realize she knew about that!!)

A Favorite Aunt (Baby) who was in a horrid car accident two years ago, her best friend was killed and the Aunt's neck was broken.

The only uncle, who has bad knee's at age 26.

Calamity who Pint has always worried about anway.

Oops, and I forgot...

¼ Pint the other baby sister, who Pint managed to figure out something somewhere is wrong, because her 4 ½ year old sister is the size of a 2 year old. They studied maternal nutrition in health class this year. She asked a few questions on babies born addicted. I think she figured out that ¼ Pint was born both addicted and mal-nutritioned. Additionally, she was mal-nutritioned until last year when I convinced Mom to TAKE AWAY THE CHOCOLATE MILK AND THE KID WOULD START EATING!!! Now ¼ Pint is growing.

Pint also worries that her sister isn't even in pre-school or learning how to read or count or anything.

So, the other night, all this came pouring out of her in bed, as her little 12 year old body is wracked with sobs of grief and horror.

So far, all I have been able to do is get her back to her counselor, have her into the school counselor, and call CPS downstate to see about sibling visitation for Pint and ½ Pint. I will file a petition for Sibling Visitation on behalf of Pint and ½ Pint. The state the other sibs are living in do not have laws about sibling visitation, however, the courts CAN decide to allow it, so we will try.

I would like to be able to do more. Pint of course, wanted us to take the kids. After I explained that we absolutely do not have the room to integrate three more children...She understood, but did not like it.

I did not say that I don't feel honestly I could take three more kids born addicted and with multiple issues and all still little. I am getting older, tireder and less um...even tempered.

But I did say that sometimes, foster care is the best thing that can happen to a child, that Pappy and I were foster parents to many kids throughout the years, some of whom we are still close too. And Pint knows this because she is close to their children as well. I said that even if the kids were removed from TT's mother's house, and put into foster care, that she, as the sister, would have some rights to continue visitation.

Do I hate junkies? You bet your ass I do. This all started with my daughter and her husband. And see what a fucking MESS it has turned into 12 years later? How many more people got pulled into the shit? How many more babies are born and involved in something they should never even be exposed too? How many health issues these poor children have and do we know that it is drug related? No, but then we don't know that it is NOT either do we?

And the counseling. How many YEARS of every week counseling have my poor girls had to go through just to be okay? Really, their entire childhood was spent with therapists.

Sure, it worked. Pint is a beautiful gifted child who is now a straight A/B student in 8^th grade and only 12 years old. She will graduate at age 16.

½ Pint is vivacious delightful (although tiny) kid who is a straight A student, 9 years old and in 5^th grade, she will also graduate at age 16.

They both see their mom weekly. They have no contact with their Dad. They have a relationship with their little sister ¼ Pint who spends the night with us regularly. They laugh, they have appropriate friendships and interactions with peers. They have typical teenage angst. They have problems which we work through,.

But really, do you actually wonder why I honestly hate their mother and father? I see the damage, and it just keeps going on and on.

Families are truly the REAL victims of drug abuse. And I hate it.

We will get through all of this. We will pray for LL and 3/4 Pint to be okay. We will pray for 1/2 Pint. We will pray for the other sibs. But damn! Really, none of this had to happen to any of them.