Tomorrow is the big day....

I woke up this morning feeling PANICKY...just started thinking about the whole thing.  Jeez, oh man I'll be glad when I'm home from the hospital and on the road to recovery.  I don't dread the surgery, I just dread the process.  Does that make any sense??

So, thinks have gotten pretty bad around here since I can't do much of anything.  I had to stop my pain meds, and I honestly don't think I could go another day like this. I walk only when I absolutely have to and that is with the help of a walker.  I did try to explain to Cindy and Stella (my doggies) about me going away, etc. but you know what...I don't think they got it at all!!

John is taking the rest of the week off and he will work from home all of next week.  That is a blessing for me.  Because I just don't know what kind of shape I'll be in.  All of this reminds me of 37 years ago when I had the horrible auto accident.  I had been married only 3 weeks when it happened.  Although we didnt get divorced for 3 years after that...the marriage was over the minute the accident happened. He just couldn't handle me being laid up like that.  I was in the hospital initially for 13 months with occasional visits home on the weekends.  My mother had come to stay with Pat (my then husband) and to be with me as much as she could.  I think Pat just resented her being there. I really don't know what happened, except that I was a burden to him and he didn't want my mother to be there.  However, if she hadn't been there, I would have really been alone.  

I remember the nurses giving him a hard time because he didn't visit very often.  My mom was there all day every day.  She was the biggest gift I could have gotten then.  She stayed with us for about 18 months total.  She just left her house and her entire life and came hundreds of miles away from home to be with me.  I truly appreciated it then and still do.  

Looking back on the whole thing,  it was the worst time of my life.  Both of my ankles were crushed and one of them was so bad that the doctors wanted to take it off, and I just insisted that they keep trying to save it.  I just couldn't handle the idea of the lower leg being gone.  Eventually, after a very long recovery period and a bone graft to my left leg, I was up and walking again.   Life at home was miserable.  Pat was working on his Master's Degree at the time and I agreed to stay with him until he got it. I think he wanted me there to do the typing for his thesis.  It certainly wasn't because there was any feelings left between us.   The accident was July 4, 1972 and mom went home sometime around January 1974.  I stayed on in Bowling Green, Ohio with Pat until May, 1974 when I moved back home with mom.  We agreed that we would not get divorced, because he was in the Navy and I needed his medical benefits for another few years. I was still being medivaced to San Francisco at Letterman General Hospital for follow up treatments at the time.  Pat had met someone else by this time and although he did want a divorce, he understood my needs.

I had a brace on one leg and the other was in a cast, but I called my old boss (I had been a legal secretary) and asked if I could "fill in" for other secretaries as they wanted to take their vacations.  He said yes and I started back to working.  After a couple of weeks, he asked me if I wanted to come back full time and be his secretary. I told him that I would love to do that, but I would need occasional time off for follow up meds, etc.  He agreed and believe it or not...He fired his current secretary and re-hired me.   We always had  a great relationship and I was very loyal to him as a secretary. I worked long hours of overtime and was very dedicated.  In fact, he had PAID for my wedding to Pat in the first place.   He rented a huge cruise liner and the reception was on the water at Charleston Harbor.  Such a beautiful outdoor wedding and a fabulous reception.  That just goes to show you that a big wedding and reception certainly doesn't help the marriage survive.  John and I were married sitting on a bar stool in his apartment. We were married by my very good friend in high school, who had become a minister.  She was in the Air Force, and stationed near where John lived at the time.  But that is another whole story that I will tell later.  I mean about meeting and marrying John.  He has been the absolute best thing that ever happened to me, and I would never have met him if not for the auto accident. Speaking of the accident.... Pat and I were living in Fort Knox, Kentucky at the army base and decided to go to visit his parents in Ohio for the 4th.  We had a nice visit but for some reason, at midnight on the morning of the 4th, Pat woke me up and said "lets go home"...We have had a nice visit, but there are lots of things that I need to get done at home. I was sound asleep and didn't want to leave, but he insisted and so I told him I would just lay in the back seat and sleep.  So, at midnight we headed out down the road.  Somewhere around 4 am he stopped the car on the side of the road and said he had to sleep.  It was a dark, deserted place and by this time, I "thought" I was wide awake.  I was really afraid to stay at this lonely place on the side of the road.  So, I got in the front seat and Pat got in the back seat and he went to sleep.  I decided to start driving.  I hadn't been on the road 20 minutes when apparently, I fell asleep.  I remember being startled and I slammed on the brakes and all hell broke loose and the next thing I remember is laying in what felt like mud. Pat was taking his belt off and tightening it around my left leg.  I knew I was hurt, but I just didn't know how bad. I do remember trying to feel down my left leg to see if it was still there.  I couldn't feel anything.  Our dog, GUS, was barking like crazy and when the ambulance got there he bit one of the paramedics.  As they loaded me on the ambulance, Gus took off into the darkness.  Pat rode with me to the hospital and after they took me into surgery, he went back down the highway with a police officer, and they found Gus several miles away running down the interstate scared to death. I loved that dog so much.  He was a beautiful weimariner that Pat had gotten just after we met as a little puppy.  He was not a particularly "good" dog because he had to be quaranteened several times for biting people.  

     

     It just so happened that my sister, Bonnie and her son Harry, were at my mom's house in Charleston when the accident happened.   They were leaving that very same day for a long road trip to the Grand Canyon.  When Pat called with the news of my accident, mom insisted that they change their plans and drive to Ohio where I was in the hospital.  They left home and weren't 3 miles from home and they had an accident with an  18 wheeler truck.  Luckily, it wasn't very bad, but bad enough to send them back home.  At this point, they called me and I was through surgery and very high on pain killers, so I was feeling no pain.   I spoke happily to mom and told her to be careful and take their time coming up to Ohio and that I was gonna be fine.  Bonnie later told me that the accident they had was really a blessing because it sent them home and were able to talk to me and that made the trip much more pleasant for them, since they weren't in such a hurry now.

My in laws at the time owned a camper and so they brought the camper down and agreed to leave it there in Ohio for mom, Bonnie, Pat and Harry to stay in.  The doctors had told me that I would be in the hospital about 6 weeks.  However, after one week, my legs started staining through the casts and there was a bad smell.  So, they decided to cut the casts open and see what was going on.  Sure enough, there was a bad infection and Pat told me that he could see grass seeds growing up through my stitches.  I had to be sent via Medivac to Fort Knox Hospital where they had to cut away much dead tissue, and this is where I was in the hospital for so long.