A week prior to our wedding in June of 1999 my wife Tanya and I were invited to go to camping with the maid of honor and her boyfriend near his home town of Inthemiddleofnowhereville. We were excited to get away from the wedding planning craziness and looking forward to the pending engagement of the couple as it was to take place that night around the campfire. We met up with some friends and loaded our gear in the back of the boyfriend's brother's pickup and headed off toward the campground only to veer off the side of the road, down a ravine and into a very stout tree going around 50 miles per hour. Tanya and I weren't wearing seatbelts, as the truck we were passengers in had none. We were thrown first into the windshield and then out of the passenger side door and onto the forest floor. Specifically into a huge patch of poison ivy, poison oak and thorns. Tanya had torn ligaments and cartilage in her knee and had broken her arm just above the elbow. I had a severe concussion and glass in my head.
The driver spilled his beer.
Tanya ended up in the emergency room of one hospital, I ended up getting a helicopter ride to another and once I woke up the next afternoon, we were 130 miles apart. We wouldn't see each other again until the rehearsal dinner. The wedding still went on and was beautiful. Tanya had a sling that matched her dress and I itched from head to toe thanks to the poison ivy. We were alive and we were married.
The honeymoon is when reality hit. Tanya was on serious pain meds to deal with the broken arm that still hadn't started to heal and the knee that still required surgery. (that would make for a wonderful first Christmas together as husband and wife) The Carnival Destiny as large as it was, still managed to roll with the motion of the ocean and that, along with the pain meds, made for a very irritated and nauseated bride. The constant itching and the nauseated, irritated wife made for a great time for me as a new husband. I spent hours on our balcony watching the water and wishing this was just a bad dream, realizing that I had just vowed to love Tanya in sickness and in health, but not really expecting the sickness part to start quite so soon. To put it bluntly, it sucked.
To be completely honest the first year of our marriage stunk. Tanya had several surgeries and months of rehab and I was stuck somewhere between home health aid and therapist as we tried to figure all of this out. I was angry, she was angry. Not the best of times.
BUT...we worked through it and learned to love each other at our weakest and worst.
The medical bills piled up and the "settlement" that we were promised by a crack attorney fizzled out to amount to around a third of what we owed. Another great lesson we had the privilege of learning right out of the gates. Finances are a hard thing to deal with as newlyweds, try adding $40,000 of medical debt to that lesson. It sucked.
BUT...we worked hard and paid it off after 6 long years and in the meantime learned to budget and live on less.
Less than 2 months after we were officially free of the debt from our car accident Tanya started having sharp pains in her side. She went in to the ER and they found several large stones in her gall bladder. No big deal, arthroscopic surgery is a piece of cake and she would be back on her feet chasing our 3 year old and 1 year old around the house in a couple of days. No such luck.
The surgeon who performed her operation sliced open her intestine and closed her up without repairing it. She spent a night in the hospital (where she was an RN) in excruciating pain and agony only to be told by the nurse that she was being too dramatic and that most people don't have this much pain, she must just not be strong enough to handle it. Right.
They discharged her, I brought her home and by that evening she was literally half dead. I drove her to the ER of another hospital only to find that she was in the process of going septic and her organs were starting to shut down. That night was the longest of my life as she groaned and shook in the ICU. They were to perform emergency surgery first thing in the morning to open her up and see what was going on. I thought again about loving my wife in sickness and in health.
The surgery was a success, but the recovery was hell. She was suffering from massive infections and an incision that spanned the length of her abdomen. We were on the critical care floor for a month. I say we because I rarely left her side for more than a few hours. I will never forget the way it felt to be trapped in the hospital. I would try to make the best of it, making the slow strolls down the hall carrying two IV poles as romantic as possible. Bringing movies in to watch together for "date night". It sucked.
BUT...we became a team during those long weeks. I surrendered myself and served her in whatever capacity she needed. She surrendered her pride and relied on me for even the most mundane of tasks. Our marriage not only survived, but thrived. My faith was strengthened as I began to feel God's hand in my life and in Tanya's healing. Our boys were at my parent's house and I tried to see them daily, they made frequent trips to the hospital to visit once Tanya was moved out of ICU and her vitals stabilized but it is a painful thing to see a mother separated from her children for 2 weeks and an even more painful thing to see a 1 and 3 year old try to process why Mommy is crying and why they can't hug her and why she doesn't come home to be with them. The recovery in the hospital was physical; the one at home over the next six months was emotional.
BUT...we learned that we can survive. That life is not fair or just. We were both off work for a total of 2+ months during this time.
Again, we found ourselves buried in a mountain of medical bills. This time we couldn't even find a lawyer who would take our case. Because Tanya lived through it we just didn't have a strong enough case. We were told, to our faces, that had she died they would have been happy to take the case. Thanks, you heartless wretches.
Anyway, Tanya recovered, she was able to deliver a beautiful baby boy last spring and all is well. Crazy with a house full of boys, but it is well. What we have found though, and the reason for my writing about this at all in this forum, is that it has created a habit in our way of thinking. A filter that all of the good things get pushed through. A feeling that at any moment, especially when things are going very well in our house, that the other shoe is going to drop. I have no idea where that phrase originated and frankly I don't care. I have realized over the past few months that living with that feeling of impending doom is a waste of time. A waste of energy. A waste of the gift of life that we have been given. It sucks.
There may very well be other tragedies that hit us. Life isn't fair or just. But to focus on that and not on the great times that daily brighten our lives defeats us before we ever step out onto the field. My kids will hopefully never remember the time that Tanya spent in the hospital or the tough months afterwards. At times I wish I could forget too. As I write out the checks to pay the bills now over 3 years old that are still hanging over us from that ordeal I find it hard to forget.
BUT...that doesn't mean we are doomed to repeat this cycle. Life happens...and right now I write the checks with a certain bit of pride in knowing that we have been through it before and we can do it again. We won. We were a team, and a damn good one at that. We will need every bit of that teamwork over the next 20 years to raise our boys into good, strong, Godly men. I am tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think instead I'll look for opportunities to run around barefoot and crazy. With sand between my toes.
I will however be driving us to the beach myself...with my seatbelt on.
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