Within the first year of our marriage, I found out that I had tumors in both breasts. I became anxious and weak. I still had my faith, but I didn't utilize the power of prayer during that time of my life. Everything was hard because I didn't look to God for comfort. I remember when I was in the hospital, I had to fast until 2pm before the surgery. All I could think about before getting the IV was food. I had to have a wire inserted into the tumor so that the surgeon could find it once the surgery started. In order to get the wire in the right place they had to put it in while I was awake and then have a mammogram completed. Because it had been so long since I had eaten, when my body went through the stress of having the wire inserted into the tumor, I stood up for the mammogram and fainted several times during the imaging process. I can remember the nurse shouting at me because I couldn't stand up straight. It was an awful day, but my parents brought me a salad from Applebee's afterwords and that made the whole thing worth it!! It took a few months but they ran the tumors through 9 different labs!! 5 said the tumors was benign (non-cancerous), 4 said the tumors was cancerous. So, the doctor told us that it wasn't cancerous.
In 2004, we wanted a house!! When we were looking for a house, we wanted one that would be structurally sound so that we wouldn't have dramatic repair bills. But we wanted a good deal on a house too! So, I started looking. I found this house that was priced 30,000 under market value and convinced Michael that we MUST go look at it! It was a foreclosure, so we expected that it wouldn't be in the greatest of shape. We got there and there were a few holes in the asphalt driveway.... not a big deal, we can fill those. The yard was full of trash and leaves... again, not a big deal because we could clean them up! We went into this house and it had an overwhelming smell of cat urine!! I thought I was going to puke!! When we looked at this house, the electricity was turned off, so we had to use flashlights for parts of the house. I remember walking through the house, looking at all the different colors! The living room was lemon yellow! The dining room had some kind of bamboo wallpaper. The kitchen had wallpaper that was mostly ivory, but it had what looked like paint splatters on it. These paint splatters were country blue, mint green and pepto bismal pink! We looked at the bedrooms. One was white with a HORRIBLE baby blue faux finish on top. I wish I had taken a picture and I would have posted it! Another one was white with a HORRIBLE lavender purple faux finish!! We went to look in the bathroom in the hall. It was a fluorescent orange/coral color!! The master bedroom and bath were OK. They were a periwinkle color. But what made this room and bathroom hideous was it had bright yellow suns and moons stenciled on the walls! Needless to say, it wasn't done with the best of artwork... In the master bathroom, the counter top was originally a mauve pink. But they had decided they wanted to paint it Volunteer orange. The paint job was bad enough that you could still see the pink streaking through!! There were holes in several of the doors. But we bought the house!! The basement was unfinished but had some wood panelling up for walls so it wasn't bare concrete. It was structurally sound! We spent approximately 10,000 on renovations and the house was beautiful!
Michael made the basement into his "man cave." And I took care of the upstairs. When Michael was in his man cave, he made it clear that I was only allowed to pass through or come ask him a question, but unless invited, I wasn't to be down there. Again, I was still very naive and didn't know the reason. His reason was that he didn't want me to know how much he was drinking. I still thought he just really like orange juice.
In 2005, we had a little boy! Because of my depressed state, I struggled to enjoy caring for him. Everything about taking care of a baby seemed hard. I wanted a baby because I thought it would take me out of my depression. We named our little boy Von. As a baby, Von was a very challenging baby. He had jaundice and the colic. If you don't know what colic is, your lucky! Colic is a stomach disorder that babies have that make them cry for no reason at all. He would just cry and cry and cry. Around 4 months old, we found out that he was allergic to milk products. So, I stopped breast feeding and we started feeding him soy formula. This change helped some, but the crying didn't totally stop.
Another reason I stopped breast feed was because we found more breast tumors. When I had those removed, a very good friend of mine stayed with me and helped me take care of Von. God blessed me with her as a very good friend in my time of need. She helped me see that taking care of Von was supposed to be a delightful duty because that was my gift from God! Even though it was still challenging to take care of Von, I gained a new perspective. I was serving GOD when I took care of my son!! Somehow this made it a little easier.
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