In Sickness and in Health..Marc’s Point of View

Over the past 15 months I have been on a ride.  And let me make this plain and simple, it bites!

A little over a year ago I was in my late forties and in better physical shape than when I was twenty and in the Marine  Corps.  Marye & I were in the gym six days a week working with weights and I ran three miles on an elliptical machine, at a level 10 of 25 resistance levels in 15:48.   That is about 2:30 faster than my fastest run in the Corps.

Then at 4 am on the 30th of June last year, I wake from a sound sleep in more pain than I have ever experienced in my life.  But I’m a guy and I went to work and was miserable and nonfunctional.    I left work a couple of hours early and went to the Triage at the local VA Medical Center in Dallas. A few hours later I leave the VA, having had an injection of some painkiller and a few days worth of hydrocodone.  Two days later I am in greater pain & return to the triage.  About eight and a half hours later I am admitted to the hospital and spend the next five days in pain and on morphine and demerol.

Now fast forward to now and the past week I have heard words like malignancy and cancer twice from the two different doctors there at VAMC Dallas.  You see I have also lost about 50 -55 pounds in that same 15 months.

But the best part yet is I am now an opioid addicted patient using two fentanyl patches totaling 175 micro grams per hour and 40 milligrams of hydromorphone 4 times a day, plus an  anti-inflammatory medicine twice a day and other sundry medications that have been  prescribed.  I am still in considerable pain and I have NO DIAGNOSIS of my condition.

The doctors don’t know what is exactly wrong with me.  Any fans of socialized medicine, now politically correctly named National Health Care.  I have it and it s*cks!   I appreciate that I have medical care but privatized medicine is much better.   Insurance companies have screwed it up but it is still much better.

How does this medical madness apply to a marriage blog you might ask?    Some of our roles in our marriage have had to reverse.  Thank God for Marye’s  blogs and how God has blessed her and replaced a chunk of our family’s income.   In January,  I lost my full time job in the jewelry industry.  My health issues and doctor visits at the VA “negatively affected the health” of my boss’ jewelry store.  The medicines affected my decision making process.  I now am able to work only about 16 hours a week part-time at the local Home Depot.

Tell me that don’t mess with the male ego, along with the frustration that comes with losing my independence.   We rely on Marye more than ever as a family.  I have been working with the kids’ homeschool work and in some of the household stuff.  I use crutches and a wheelchair to get around every day.

Then yesterday I was told I cannot drive.  This was another blow and more pressure on my wife.

I haven’t even mentioned the affect this has had on our sex life.  I mean it wasn’t as active as Doug and Annie Brown’s in their book, Just Do It.  But after twenty-eight years we had made love at least four or more times a week after we successfully conquered some of my hang-ups about sex and the hurt it had imposed on my wife, the most important person in my life, after God, of course.

But that is another post.  Now we feel like we get lucky if it is once or maybe twice a month we made love.   So this little adventure we are on affects every part of our marriage, our family, and us. Especially when Mr. Grumpy comes home from work or errands.

I will be writing more about the “in sickness and in health” clause of the marriage vows, and  how it relates to our marriage.

Image:Morguefile