Glad to see you back man. I understand your situation. I have been out of work for a while now and I am struggling quite a bit, and it looks like my wife will have to have some major medical work and we lost our insurance due to cutbacks at her job.
Programming jobs here in Texas (USA), are very slim. Most of the jobs require at least a BA, some MAs and they want you to know every language ever made. When I went to school TVs still had tubes in them (and I bet some of you have never even seen a vaccumm tube:)). There was no such thing as Computer Science back then, so I am a self-taught programmer. I have looked at going back to school, but I hate to spend $50,000+ and then not find a job, which is happening a lot here.
You are in my thoughts man. All we can do is keep on keeping on.