Our Glory Road

                                        Our Glory Road

Why was I here?  I had just woken up in a hospital bed and when I looked around, I was alone. I had been in hospital rooms before so at least I knew that much. I searched for the nurse’s call button and pressed it and waited. Nothing was coming back I just had the most slitting headache of my life!  After what seemed like forever, but was probably only 20 minutes or so a nurse walked in and I asked her, “Why am I here and why does my head hurt so much?” She said, “Well, I guess I should sit down, this is going to take awhile.

She told me I had been in a car accident and that I had a concussion and I’d been brought to the emergency room around 10:30am that morning. She wasn’t sure of the details but she started asking me questions. “What year was it?” I replied, “I think it is 2001 and my father just died in November.” She said, “No it is March 1st, 2002.” Who’s the President, again I was at a loss, “Is it Bill Clinton?” “One right,” she said. “Do you know what city you are in?” and I said, either Springfield or Eugene, Oregon.” “Second one right.” and we laughed, but my head hurt so bad it wasn’t much of a laugh.

“So is the concussion the reason my headaches so much?” and she said “Yes it is.” “Why am I alone, where is my husband?” “Well, he had to leave since his Mom brought him down from Oakridge, you wreaked the car. 
                                 
Great was all I could think, I liked that car. She proceeded to tell me that it was now 8pm and that the Doctor for the ward would be in shortly. She also asked if I was hungry and I said yes, but I’m not sure what I can eat. She said she would see what they had. “Oh, my name is Diane and yours is?” I thought for a minute and finally found it, but it didn’t fit, “I think it is Lynn, but it doesn’t feel right. She patted my hand and said the Doctor would be in shortly.

About an hour later a doctor walked in and asked how I was feeling. I explain that I had no memory of what had happened, but the nurse had said I was in a car accident. He said, “Yes, and you’ve been out for over ten and a half hours.” Diane said you remembered some things, but that you were off on the date. He said, “Either your memory will come back gradually or all at once any maybe only bits and pieces will return.” “But you can’t force it; just let it come back as it wants to.” I did ask how my back was because I did remember I’d had back surgery and a fusion when I was 24. To this he answered, “We have taken ex-rays and nothing looks like it is broken, but we won’t be sure for awhile. Let’s just see how things progress, shall we?”           
                                 
                                   
With that I sipped some more of the ginger ale and tried to eat a few bites of the chocolate pudding, but I was really more worried than hungry since my memory seemed more like Swiss cheese than any sort of functioning mental ability. I could remember that I had a College Degree in Psychology but nothing since early November when my Dad had passed away suddenly. The nurse arrived with a shot to make my head stop hurting so much, but said that they couldn’t give me anything for sleep because they had to watch me because of the concussion. But she assured me that they would make me as comfortable as possible and just to turn on the TV for a distraction and try to relax. That would prove much easier said than done.

I spent a restless night taking small, short naps when I could, but the nurses were in every half an hour or so to check on me and take my vital signs. The next morning around 10 am my husband showed up. He apologized for not staying the night with me, but said his mom had to get home and he had no choice. He was another mystery. He talked liked we’d known each other forever and yet something felt wrong and I wasn’t sure what.

                                   
Around 2 pm another doctor came in and mostly repeated what the doctor had said last night. They had no idea how long it was going to take for my memory to come back and that my short-term memory was definitely affected So just relax and not worry and see how things progressed. Much easier said than done, I thought. My husband did fill in a few of the pieces but since I’d been alone in the car he couldn’t tell me a lot. He did say that I had come within 6 inches of taking out some people’s bedroom on their mobile home on the back road to Westfir. The wife was sick and her husband had been sitting with her and I almost caved in the wall on top of them. That was scary!  So was just going to the bathroom. They removed the catheter and I’d have to call a nurse to help me get to the rest room. She’d help me slowly shuffle hunched over to use the bathroom. This was an ordeal and my back would really hurt when I returned to bed. They always had some pain meds ready because they knew I’d need them for awhile.

After three days they let me go home. Even that was strange. We had two cats and I smelled of the hospital so it took them awhile to get used to me again. Patches and Max did keep me company while I spent the next 3 weeks in bed, just getting up to go to the bathroom. Showers were fun, my husband would have to help me stand just to rinse off. At least he left me alone, not the way it had been with my back surgery years before when he was always wanting sex.                               
                                                                 
                                   
When I finally could walk around the house a little I found that I would forget what I was doing. I had to place Post-it notes all over the place to remind me of when I was to see my doctor again and I spent most of my time not knowing why I’d entered a room.  I hated my husband to touch me unless it was needed and then two and a half months later he touch me and “I hate you,” rushed through my mind. After twenty-six and a half years this took me back, to say the least. He told me he loved me at least fifteen times a day, but I never answered back, I just remained quiet.

My Birthday was coming up in May and I started sorting through my things. I had already told him I was going home to see my mother for a few weeks and this was my way of cleaning up all the things I no longer wanted. Clothes that were too big, books I had read and no longer wanted, just sorting what I did want from what I didn’t. Since I was leaving a lot of things behind, not that he knew that then, there weren’t a whole lot of boxes that I did pack, mostly the things I really loved.  So on May 10th I got on a train with a rolling suitcase and my two pillows strapped on top. I need one for my head and one for between my knees when I slept.  I had called my mother and told her I was leaving him, I just couldn’t stay any longer.

                               
She wasn’t happy, but said she could use the help sorting out all my Dad’s things that needed to be donated after his death.  I never gave my husband an exact date, just told him that we were going to sort through my Dad’s things and it would take a little time.
                                   
The train was two hours late that day and I had to wait around the tiny station because of a forest fire down South. I learned that day that the freight trains owned the tracks and that the Amtrak had to move off onto a siding when ever one was due to come through. You learn the strangest things when you are waiting around for travel connections. At least it was a nice day so the waiting wasn’t too bad.  I spent a lot of time talking to the agents though to see just how late the train was going to be and calling my mom to let her know. A boring day to say the least and my back was still hurting something terrible by the time the train finally pulled into the station three hours late.

My mom’s grand niece and her husband were due out from Atlanta the last week of May, and they were going to stay for two weeks.  Mom and I, with my sisters urging decided to buy a computer and have Robyn and Jeff help us set it up and get it running.  Now I had never been on the internet in my life, I’d used a computer before for my jobs, but never been on the web. So this was a brand new experience. One of my mom’s friends had told her she played Bridge on the net on a game site called Pogo, so we decided to checked it out.

                                 
A friend that I had met in a room on Pogo had helped me set up a Web Cam so we could all talk to each other just like we were in the same room.

Part One                                 


                                 
I had met a wonderful man in this same game room and I couldn’t wait to see Sam's name pop up on yahoo mail and I found out later he felt the same way.  Sam had the most wonderful head of silver gray hair mixed with the little bits of the darker brown he was born with. He told me he had been going gray since he was in his early twenties. He saw me through my divorce and helped me with my memory problems and got me to write short stories. I later found a site on the net where I could copyright them and that made everything more special.  He encouraged me to write adult love stories about my passion that I’d never been able to let loose in my marriage. The accident had changed me and I was no longer the person I once was. I started summing again and lost 40 pounds and felt the best I had for years.  Depression puts on weight fast.  It really felt good to be in better shape

                                 
The summer of 2003, a year after we’d met, his mother got sick with what she insisted was just the flu. I kept telling him to get her to the Doctor and get her checked out because she wasn’t getting any better and finally he did.  The doctors found out she had suffered a series of mini-strokes and she was not going to live. We would talk late into the night about his feeling about this and I watched him get more and more depressed and get skinnier and skinnier after she passed away.

                                   
So in mid October of that year I got on a bus and headed to Florida. Everything seemed to be going wrong; my suitcase was too heavy and I missed the first bus. Then the second one, going to WY was late so I didn’t leave Portland until almost mid-night. I would call Sam and tell how badly my trip was progressing.

                                   
Then I had to board another bus and headed for Chicago. This part of the trip was the second over night and sleeping was hard. Then it would have been a straight shot from Atlanta to Saint Petersburg but just over the border of Florida there was a two semi-truck accident where one had come out of the rest area and entered the freeway the wrong way. We waited six hours and then our driver said we were detouring to Orlando because he was out of driving hours and we would have a new driver finish the trip, everyone moaned.

So I called Sam from Orlando and told him what was going on and that I wouldn’t be in until 4 am, at the earliest. We both were a little peeved but we also were insomniacs so I told Sam to take a nap, if he could, and I’d be along around 4 am.

When the bus finally got into Saint Petersburg, we hugged and walked out to his van. We were a little hesitant about talking but that soon passed and he had me laughing. The first thing he did when we got to the house was kick off his shoes, and I said, “Oh, Good, a man after my own heart, I don’t wear shoes inside either.” We kissed as we walked through the living room and into the bedroom, where we made love for the very first time. We had been working up to this moment for ages and it just felt right to fall into bed together. Sam said, “It will get better in time,” and I said “It was be best I’d ever had and I was staying to the end; whenever that would come.”

                                 
I told him the MS was not a big thing and we would handle it in our own way, just as he’d help me regain my memory as well as it would return. We shook hands on this and rolled over and went to sleep, just as if we’d been doing it for years, we felt that comfortable together.

We sleep until noon and then we started our daily ritual. We just comfortably settled into it with out really thinking about it.
                                   
I’d always make the coffee the night before so we could just plug it in when the first one got up.  I’d also started giving him butterfly kisses around his neck, telling him that he’d never gotten the amount of love he deserved. He didn’t ever argue with that statement and the kisses progressed to include hugs as well. I explained that, “I needed to tell him everyday that I loved him and just how much he meant to me because you never know what tomorrow has in store for you.”  I told him it was a firm belief of mine to never let a day pass by that I hadn’t held him, kissed him and told him I loved him.  As it turned out that was just what we both needed.  Another part of our daily activities was CNN and Headline News. They were the first things that Sam watched every day. He was very happy he was no longer playing the futures market nor had any money in the Stock Market at all, so he mostly watched the price of gold and silver, since he had some silver coins that he’d had for 25 years and the price had never gone up on them. So he watched and he waited until he could sell them off and then they only gave him money for the weight, so that was a bad investment in the long run.

                                   
He wore this after shave called Paul Sabastian and it would drive me wild.  It must have been just the right combination of pheromones and I couldn’t keep my hands off him.  I’d play on the computer mostly on Pogo were we met and on my Legend of the Green Dragon site. He was my knight in Shinning Armor from the beginning of the creation of my clan on one of the sites where I played.  (Really he’d actually been my Knight in shinning Armor for longer than that.)  I even wrote that the first thing you saw when you pushed open the double oaken doors was a suit of armor with a name tag, reading “Sam”.

I became his nurse and his Geisha Girl almost immediately and he’d always call me to wash his back. This was extremely enjoyable because I could tease him too and it made us feel even closer to each other. We had a lot of fun playing Geisha but kept all our sex in the bedroom except for once on the TV room floor.

                                   
After about three months I sat on the floor while he was in his recliner and asked him to teach me just how he wanted to be made love to. Actually he wasn’t shocked; he just said no one had ever asked him that before. We got some help from a tape on “deep throat” and I watched it twice before trying it on my love.

With the MS it was hard to keep weight on him.  I tried to get him to at least eat some oatmeal because neither of us ever ate lunch. I’d give him a list for dinner and depending on what day it was we’d then decide on dinner. Sometimes we would plan a few days in advance, but usually not.

                                 
We always ate pizza at least once a week, usually on Thursday night because that was the might “Survivor’ was on. But I always made a salad and also kept him well stocked in cake donuts, his favorite. As far as we were concerned, we had a perfect relationship

Part Two                                 

                                 
At the end of 2003 his sisters finally convinced him to buy their mothers house from them. He had even been willing to forgo the 2% executor fee, for all the good it did him.                   
                                   
                                   
His younger sister hired a lawyer on the advice of a friend of Sam’s and the lawyer never did one thing that Sam asked. She also said she should be executor and not him because his MS. That was like the tail wagging the dog since she was the youngest of the bunch.  We both knew that neither of his sisters or his mother had even bothered to look up what MS was, nor did they ask him how it was affecting him. Then in December 2003 his younger sister wrote him a really nasty letter and told him she did not approve of anything he was doing and that he should have asked his sisters before he even moved me in. This was a mature adult passed his 55th birthday. So he worked on a letter for over a month and he banned him both from his life. For some reason he let his older sister back in, I never knew why. But he did put the Zippo lighter away that she had bought him and after he wrote the letter he never used it or looked at it again.

                                   
Sam took his Avonex for his MS after Jay Leno’s monologue every Tuesday night.  Then he would go out and work in the yard on Wednesdays and pull out his back then suffer until Friday.  After this happened a few times, I sat him down and asked if he was seeing a pattern here.  That opened his eyes and when I suggested that he should take Wednesdays off and recover from his shot he said, “That sounds like a plan, less pain and leave everything for Thursdays.”  So that was it, he had his recovery day and never pulled his back out again.

Part Three

The biggest mistake that we ever made was taking his aunt into our home. We didn’t know the first thing about all the law enforcement agencies or elder agencies that would be needed for her care.  He actually thought he could get her to go live with her daughter who had not spoken to her for most of her life.

What we had was headache after headache and she refused to follow any rules.  She would steal candy from the kitchen as we slept and then progressed to stealing my medications.  Because she had the stroke first and then the Dementia set in she was very violent.  Because of my degree in Psychology I have followed this on the web and in text books and because of my back I was really scared when she started beating me up.
                                   
All my life I have been around old people; granted they were all financially secure and never demanded money. They never pulled my hair, threw me around, hit me with their canes or threw me into furniture. Never once had one spit in my face.  I had back surgery at 25 and later from a car accident, a compression fracture above the surgery site.  I also developed bone loss that is much like osteoporosis, which puts me at a -3 and -4 when I was tested in 2001. (Found out later that I did have full blown Osteoporosis) I have tried my best to honor my elders and treat them with respect. All of them loved me and would see and talk to me.  I never had a problem in this area until his aunt moved in with us.                     
                                   
Beginning in 2005 we were hounded with long distance phone calls 24 hours a day from his aunt who he barely knew. She demanded money constantly when he owed her nothing. She always complained that she had no money and could not live on her own Social Security after a stroke. We should have changed the phone number and never gotten involved, but hindsight is 20/20. Instead, we thought he could hook her up with her daughter, who she had run off at 18 because his aunt didn’t like the man her daughter wanted to marry.  We paid for her plane fare from Las Vegas, paid for her belongings to be shipped, loaned her luggage because she had never owned any and brought her to Florida. Everything was a nightmare from then on.  Sam had to pay all of her closing bills and still needed money for the damage she did to the vertical blinds in the spare bedroom because she refused to leave them alone until she broke them. There were a lot of expenses from the damages she was responsible for.  She once flushed a Depends down the toilet and we needed a Plummer to fix it.  She would refuse to wear the Depends even though the bed would be wet in the morning.
                                   
There was also the expense of the carpets she destroyed by peeing and shitting on them, plus the bed and the bedspread. The brand new bedspread had denture cream, Fixodent, all over it and it would not come out in the wash.  The worst had yet to come.
                                   
She attacked me the first time in late December 2006 by pulling my hair and throwing me into a wooden vanity (I lost 30 % of my hair from this attack). She threw me on the bed; kicked me with her foot and hit me with her cane after I caught her stealing my prescription medications which I had been looking for sometime. This was five months before the worst happened. (From what happened to me next I learned if you are old you can steal anything you want, lie and cheat all you want, and you will never serve one day of jail time or have any repercussions from doing these things at all.)
                                   
This had happened twice, the last time she had grabbed my hair and thrown me into the bathroom sink tile right where the back surgery bone graft never healed on the left side plus the area where the compression fracture above the surgery site was, I was in real pain.  The she proceeded to throw me repeatedly into the tile around the sink, all the while pulling on my hair.  She then went on to breaking my glasses while she kicked me again.  I kept remembering the research I’d done and how many caregivers had died at the hands of the people they were caring for. This scared me to death after I had been attacked twice and this was sounding like the same story to me.  (We’d taken her to be tested for dementia and been told she had it and she refused to take the medication.)                           
                                 
She had signed a Durable Power of Attorney, Durable Health Care Power of Attorney and Designated Health Care Surrogate and both Sam's and my name were on it. I was still being asked to ok her operations and whether she can have blood or anesthesia.  For a woman I have never touched, let alone abused, I should have not been forced to take her abuse. We finally found an assisted living facility that would take her and I was extremely happy it was finally over.   
                                   

We deeply regret that we where taken in by a woman who has lied and deceived everyone all her life. She only had one friend for all of her 90 years because everyone else saw through the lies. Her first love was shop lifting where she would change the tags on the things she bought.  She told me this and laughed.  Sam and I have both realized that good deeds are punished more often than they are appreciated.

A month later I had a severe pain episode and ended up in the ER the day after I had seen my Dr. for new pain pills.  Then my left knee started screaming with pain and I went to see an orthopedic doctor which resulted in MRI’s: one on my back and one on my knee.  I just had applied for Medicaid, for the third time, so at the moment I do not have any insurance, I know I have to go to the Doctor, but I am afraid that something is very wrong and I do not have the money to pay for any hospital bills. Guess I will just have to wait and see what happens now. Will this ever end?  Will I ever get my life back the way it was?


Part Four


Finally things got back to normal after all this.  We spent our time like we’d always had; sleeping late, watching TV, but we had a lot of love going for us too.  Two special occasions come to mind that really made me laugh. 
Sam had already told me that it was too hot to wear underwear and at first I thought he was joking but it turned out to be true.  One day he tip-toed up to the opening to the hall that intersected the bedrooms, bathroom and could be entered through the kitchen or the front room I heard two bare feet and looked over and there was Sam in his birthday suit wiggling his finger.  As he headed off to the bedroom so did I.  Then one day he way sitting in his recliner and I was at the computer in the front room.  He said, “Gee, I have been sitting in this chair, naked, for the last ten minutes and you haven’t once come over to see me.”  I knew something was up, so I started into the family room.  By that time Sam was ready to leap up and head to the bedroom, which is just what he did and I followed.  We always had great sex, which is really the wrong name for what it was; we made love.

For Easter 2007 I made him a huge Easter basket with everything in it.  Chocolate eggs, marshmallow eggs, a very tall hollow Easter Bunny and jelly beans and just everything I could think of.  It was all sealed in cellophane.  I made a card off of my Hallmark program on the computer and that was my Easter present to him that year.  I made lots of just every day cards too and Sam would always say while his coffee was brewing, “Oh, I see the mailman was already here.”  Then he would always give me a kiss and I would rub his shoulders until the coffee was ready.  He was my king. Christmas of 2007 was like all our Christmases, we just never got into the mood.  We’d send all the cards to everyone on our large list and I would make the cards on the computer.  Sometimes he would use on that the Indian Children had sent, but usually it was a Hallmark off the computer.  Then we would sit at the table and we’d address the cards and put the postage stamps on.  Then it was a run to the Post Office just down the street and we’d be finished.  I always made a ham for Christmas, sometimes one bought from the store and on others we’d purchase a Honey Baked ham and cook that.  On Thanksgiving it was turkey but it was always a mess to de-bone the bird and we’d end up all greasy and laughing our heads off.

Also a Christmas tradition was to stay up late and make small loafs of banana bread for all the neighbors.  We’d have the stereo playing and once I asked him to sing for me.  That was a wonderful, enchanted night. 

When the New Year started it was just more of the same.  We’d love and we’d talk about everything and bake sometimes.  We were born just five months apart so I’d only have five months to tease him that he was older than I was.  We had great times.  In June Andy and Cheryl invited us to the company picnic and we planned to stay at the Hampton Inn the day before.  We sat and talked the whole day through only once did we get in the pool.  Then late that Saturday night we were looking for a place to eat and Sam said, why not "The Grill"?  Only problem was he couldn’t remember exactly where it was!  So we got in the car and it turned out it was just across the street and we could have walked.  We all laughed.  The next morning I wasn’t feeling that great and he was a little under the weather too.  So we begged off on the picnic and made plans to meet more often because it had been a wonderful day.

July started with both of us feeling under the weather.  I went to my Doctor towards the end of the month and was treated for a Sinus Infection.  When Sam finally went his Doctor wasn’t there and he saw a fill in doctor.  This doctor took a chest x-ray and gave him six anti-botics and sent him home.  Buy the weekend he wasn’t able to swallow.  So August 12th I got him in to see his own doctor.  Between the pills and not eating he was really weak and his doctor put him right into the hospital.  They drained fluid from around his heart and lungs for the next three days so all I could do was talk to him on the phone he was so weak.  Then I went into the hospital on Friday August 15th and around 5pm a cancer doctor walked in and since Sam was still groggy from the drainage treatments he missed the first part of the conversation.  Sam’s tests would not be back until Monday or later, but the doctor was 97% certain that it was cancer.  I never had the heart to tell him as we sat there talking after the doctor left.  It was after 5pm and the test results weren’t in so what could I really say?  So we just sat there holding hands and talking about other things.  He did say to bring his clothes that he wanted to go home and sit in his recliner and watch TV to see what the market was doing.  I would always have to change the subject just enough so he’d forget he had asked.
On August 19th they moved him down a floor to the Hospice section.  The floor was much quieter and he only had one roommate rather than three.  The next day was the “Quality of Life” meeting with all the doctors and nurses assigned to his case.  I had gotten there around six am and we’d just been talking.  He again asked for his clothes and I finally had to tell him that maybe the meeting might not be such a good thing after all.  Small preparation, but I still did not have the heart to tell him. 

First the doctor for the ward explained just what the “Quality of Life” meeting would cover and then she told Sam the bad news.  He had esophageal cancer and it had been there for years.  It was inoperable and he didn’t have much time left.  I held his hand and I knew he was having a terrible time taking all this in.  Up until a day and a half before he passed away he’d only asked for aspirin and sleeping aids at night.  Then he asked for a shot of morphine late Monday night August 25th.  I called all his friends and told them what was going on, that he had very little time.  They all came by to see him.  On Tuesday they put him on a morphine drip and he quietly went to sleep.  On Wednesday, August 27th, Andy’s birthday, he passed away, never waking up since they started the morphine drip. 

To say I was broken hearted is an understatement.  I was sick with a bladder infection when he passed and was curled up on the couch.  At exactly 5:45 pm I felt something brush my cheek and kiss my lips, he was saying goodbye and I knew it was him.  I ran for the phone and called the hospital and was sent to voice mail.  When I talked to the doctor later that night I told her, “You probably won’t believe this, but Sam was here at 5:45pm and told me goodbye.”  She replied, “That was almost a common occurrence." and it seems to happen a lot because other loved ones had said the same thing to her over the years.

He told me he will be at the Gates of Heaven and he will take my hand and we will walk through together.  I almost can’t wait.  He has come to me a few times since and just held me, the feeling of his arms around me is just the same as it was when he was living.  He has also helped to change the life of Andy’s youngest daughter too.  She is expecting a baby May 5th, 2010 and this experience has turned her life around.  So I have taken up where Sam left off and helped with things the baby will need.  I will always love Sam, he was the best thing that ever happened to me, but I doubt if I will move on very soon.  I feel him around me at odd times and when I am sad he almost always seems to come.  I love you Sam, and I will never stop.