Part Two....

OK, so more of the story....

I met L in October. He had to reevaluate his feelings for me in December. We got back together in January. By April we were engaged.
In those months, I lost a big chunk of myself. I turned into a meek sort of person rather than the strong, confident woman that I had been just a few months before. I lost my spunk. But I didn't realize this was a bad thing. I knew that you had to make some concessions when you were in a serious relationship and since we were planning our wedding and for our future, I sort of let myself fall by the wayside. I realize now, that I was catering to a person with a mental illness. L was on medication for either depression or anxiety when we met and at the beginning of our relationship. Somewhere between April 2005 and July 2006 when we were married, he decided to take himself off of the medication. No doctor's approval, nothing. Just decided that he didn't need it anymore. As I realize now, that a lot of people with mental illnesses do this.

So we bought a house in February. We got married in July. The week after we were married, my great aunt died. I was closer to this woman than I was to either of my grandmothers (one of which had passed away that March). Needless to say, I was extremely depressed. I lost interest in most things. I worked and came home. Our home life was not good. He was never around. He would not come home after work until well past midnight most nights. He went to school an hour away 2 nights a week, so we never spent a full week together. As a matter of fact, I was sleeping on the sofa at my parent's house 3 days after our wedding because he had to go to school and I wasn't yet comfortable sleeping in this big house by myself yet. He spent more times with his friends than he did with me. That's when I started to be really unhappy. I was finally able to work though the grief of my aunt's death, and I was getting back to that version of myself. Things were better for a short period of time. Then in late August or early September, we had gone to a classic car show and that night, I was watching a movie and realized that I couldn't turn my head. This turned into a month of excruciating pain. I couldn't sleep. The only position that was comfortable was on my hands and knees with my head almost on the floor. After being labled a druggie by my doctor, I went to a chiropractor, to no avail. Finally, in mid October, I woke up one day and it was like my eyes were crossed. I went on about my business thinking it would get better. The chiro said it was a disk in my neck pushing on a nerve in my skull, so other than the pain, I went on as usual. 3 days later, I was pretty much blind and my family pulled rank on my and took me to the ER. After writhing in pain in the ER for hours... and being tested for everything known to man, they finally called in a neurologist. Within minutes, he diagnosed me with a disease called pseudotumor cerbri.. which litterally means false brain tumor. My body was acting like I had a brain tumor, but there was no tumor present.



And so, there I was, partially blind and a newlywed. I was in the hospital for 4 days... spending my 26th birthday getting 5 different scans (MRIs, etc) and an unsuccessful spinal tap. It wasn't pretty. So when I was lying in the hospital, where do you think L was? Anywhere but the hospital. Granted, he did sleep in those awful chairs at night, but during the day, he was nowhere to be found. He even took FMLA time off work. And I don't doubt that he was tired after sleeping in that chair, but he pretty much did whatever he wanted to during the day. His friends would come to visit me, asking where he was... and I had no clue. Some of them still bring that up to me. Not to him of course, but they tell me how upset they were with him.

I was off work for 3 months. I had severe optic nerve damage and was still in pain for a good month after I left the hospital. Since the heat situation in our house is not good, my mom would come and pick me up on her lunch break and take me to her house. I stayed there on over into the night most nights, simply because L didn't want to come and pick me up. He worked at a factory and he got off at 3:30, yet the earliest I remember him picking me up was around 7 pm. Sometimes he would actually be at our house but wouldn't come get me. Eventually, after a few weeks, he told me that he didn't want to deal with me. And he couldn't stand the fact that I was always there at the house. What else was I supposed to do? I was pretty much blind. I couldn't read, I couldn't watch tv (though I could listen to it). My only entertainment was books on CD. My health decisions were left up to my parents and my sister. They are the ones that took me to the doctor appointments (which were every 2 weeks). L did manage to go to one, when I went to a specialist at Vanderbilt, but all he did during the appointment was sleep. No, I'm not kidding or making that up.

I finally regained most of my sight by Thanksgiving and I convinced the doctors that I wasn't going to have a shunt into my skull to drain the fluid. I was on a disgustingly high dose of medication that made me feel terrible all the time. Now, I know you guys what I'm talking about when I say that when you feel that bad, anything sexual is the farthest thing from your mind. No excuses for me... I really did have a headache all the time. And it's no wonder, my spinal fluid pressure was still much too high. This is when we started having more serious issues. L was talking about finding someone else to take care of his needs. Completely ignoring the fact that I have other needs that needed to be met at that point at my life. That happens a lot in this relationship.
Ok, this is longer than I intended. So it looks like this will be at least 2 more posts before I finish everything. I'll post the next part tomorrow.