He argued with me about things, due to his financial stress, but I just kept silent, which was slowly killing me. I didn’t know it, but it was tearing up my guts. Before I knew it, I was having chronic diarrhea and constipation. It alternated within three to four days of each other. Then I went to the health department because the diarrhea got so bad. It was my irritable bowel acting up and I knew it. The doctor told me that I had the flu; I told them that it was not the flu, but he wouldn’t listen and gave me a new flu prescription medication. Usually, I read up on anything that goes into my body, but I was too sick, so I took the medicine and four days later, my colon started bleeding. I lost a whole lot of blood. I ended up in the hospital. I was so weak. I went to doctor after doctor, took test after test. Finally I was diagnosed with colitis. I had constipation and bloody diarrhea that would alternate three to four days apart. I was in bed with horrible, excruciating pain. I lost so much blood that I lost weight. I had to take narcotics to knock me out because of the pain.
My business kept afloat, because a friend, Brenda, who was like my partner (but without any financial responsibilities) worked with me. I made phone calls between my bathroom visits, which consisted of about twenty to thirty in a day, and set appointments. If I was out of bed, I would keep the appointments. If I was in bed, Brenda went for me. I worked mostly from bed for an entire year.
During this time, James spent very little time with me. Usually on weekends he would get a movie and we would watch it in our room, while we paused it for my bathroom breaks. But, unfortunately, he gave me very little attention. He did, however take care of my daily needs. He would leave work from his full time job, with his boss’s permission, and come and feed me lunch and let the dog out. Although I was fed three meals a day, I never felt loved or cared for, I felt like a burden, the same feelings I felt when I was on bed rest from my surgeries and pregnancies. I felt so very alone. I talked to my pastor who referred my husband to the youth pastor who was helping him to do the right things. Things seem to get better between him and I. We started watching counseling videos that helped us to communicate better. We really started getting closer, even though I was sick. We began having intimacy and I thought we were on our way to recovering from all that had happened since we had moved to Lynchburg.
There was no more school, no more anger or frustration. Now we could start all over again, maybe this time we could really find the love that was buried somewhere in us. I had hoped it would be different since we didn’t have those kinds of stresses; he really started changing. One day, he asked what the one thing I wanted him to do was. I responded with, “paint our house.” He did, each and every room, without any arguing. It was great, we talked and laughed and started becoming friends. Not just two people living together, but true friendship. He was attentive to my needs and I was attentive to his. But the closer we got intimately, the more he started pulling away from me by arguing with me again about everything.
When I did get out of bed, an absolute gift from God, my house was a mess, which made me feel worse. I could no longer take care of the bills, making sure they were paid on time. We weren’t making it on his salary once again. I had tons of medical bills that were accepting $10 per month, thankfully. When I was first sick, I had no insurance, but then I got it through his work. So through much arguing, even in my condition, he finally got a part-time job to help us out. But because I was so sick, he had to soon quit that so he could be home to feed the kids dinner.
Since our house had been newly painted, we decided to sell it ourselves to get us out of the financial jam that we were in. We had even found a house that we both liked that would make our payments lower and we wouldn’t have to pay for the kid’s tuition for the coming year, which was July of 2000. Even though we all loved the house, James wanted a house with a lower mortgage. That would have been fine if I didn’t have my heart set on this particular house. It caused major arguments. But our house wouldn’t sell, so we got a realtor, and even that didn’t help, and every time we had an open house, I would end up having a colitis attack. I had to go to Angela’s house and lie on her couch so that I would be by a bathroom. The stress of selling our house brought it on. We continued to look for houses and continued to try to sell ours. It was extremely stressful, trying to keep an immaculate house with three kids and a dog and a cat.
One time I had worked so hard to clean the house, and I truly felt it was show ready, but apparently, I was wrong because my realtor wrote me an e-mail telling me that one of the prospective buyers said that my house looked “lived in.” I didn’t really know what that meant, I was kind of hurt by the statement but more than that, I was confused. I mean, what did they expect with a family of five and two pets? James came home that night in a bad mood, but I hadn’t picked up on his mood yet. I proceeded to tell him of the e-mail and before I knew it, he was yelling at me and telling me how the house was a mess as always, and what a terrible housekeeper I was. I was totally blown away by his words, and it really hurt deep. I began to realize that I wasn’t going to be the one to take care of the house anymore if I was such a bad housekeeper. Plus, half the time I was in bed, so I got really tired of being the one in charge of the whole thing. It was just too much for my body to handle while also on my journey of healing from this dreadful disease.
Then we found another house that was even a lower mortgage that was in the county that the kids went to school in. Because we had our house on the market and we were looking for a house in the county, we didn’t have to pay tuition. I got my heart set on yet another house, after looking at countless homes. It was a great house, with exactly what we needed, but then James wanted an even lower mortgage. We argued and argued about the fact that he wasn’t going to find a house that had all that he wanted, in the location that he wanted, for the price that he wanted. I was trying to get him to see the reality. I kept telling him that if we put a contract on a house, then our house would sell. But he wouldn’t believe me. He kept saying that we sell our house first then we find a house. It was a continual battle. He said that it just wasn’t God’s timing and that when it’s time, He would provide a house for us. What he wouldn’t listen to was that houses in the county go very fast, and if he really wanted to live in the county, then he needed to put a contract on a house, and leave the rest for God. It was going to have to be a contingency contract anyways. We weren’t going to own two houses. We finally put a contract on the house, and they counter offered. He wouldn’t agree to their terms and he wouldn’t even counter offer again. That’s when I got really fed up. I was not going to be the one in charge of keeping the house clean and I surly wasn’t going to get my heart set on another house, just to have it ripped away from me whenever he changed his mind again about the amount of mortgage he wanted to pay.
You see, a house is a very emotional thing for a woman, and the whole thing was just making me sicker. I was done, but I didn’t want to lose our house, so I called the mortgage company and told them what was going on, and they graciously put us on a forbearance plan, meaning that we didn’t have to pay our mortgage for three months. That’s $2,700 we would have and our credit wouldn’t be affected at all. Budgeted correctly, that could last a while.
I was done. I had rescued James for the last time. It was time for me to create a vacuum for him. I just needed to get better; that’s what I needed to concentrate on, not finances or bills or any other responsibilities including looking for a house. I told him that I was done looking and selling and if he really wanted a new house, then he could just leave and get an apartment. I wasn’t going to argue with him anymore. I just couldn’t, it wasn’t worth it. I needed to get better no matter what it took.
So that’s what I did, I went on a journey of healing. I was going to stop at nothing. No medicine was working, and the stress was making me sicker and everything that he would complain about: the house, the kids, and the finances would make me worse. I got weaker physically, but stronger emotionally. Yes, sometimes I wanted to die, but I knew it wasn’t time to give up. And yes, I definitely wanted to leave him, but I knew for sure I couldn’t handle taking care of the kids myself. I was stuck and I knew it. I think that is really why I wanted to die. I wanted God to take me out of my misery. I would say to him, please just take me home. Then I would think about my kids and get the strength to keep fighting for a treatment that would work. I had tried everything including herbs, acupuncture and medication after medication. Thousands of dollars in medical bills later, nothing worked. I knew that I would get better, but it had to start with me. It had to start with how I handled my emotions.
That is when I made the change. I knew I couldn’t rescue my husband anymore. I just didn’t have the energy for it. I had to let him fall. No matter what was going to happen, I wasn’t going to pick up the role of leader of the house again. I couldn’t, my health depended on me letting go. So I did. I just realized that if he didn’t pay the electric bill, then the electricity would just have to get turned off. And I just had to be ok with it. Angela really helped me be strong. I don’t know what I would have done without her. She was and still is such a blessing to me. James was now in charge of paying the bills. The house, the kids, the bills and all the needs that go into it were all his. I wouldn’t imagine him not paying $10 a month for my medical bills, after all, he wasn’t paying the mortgage, so he had plenty of money, so the other stuff should have been no problem. The responsibilities were not mine anymore, what a relief. But boy did I hear about it. I was in bed bleeding and in so much pain, and he would start complaining about all the medical bills. I felt like he was kicking me when I was down. I felt like I was causing him all these bills and I felt so guilty, it made me sicker. By this time I was having attacks on a regular basis, sometimes every two days, and during these attacks I was completely bedridden. And as time went on my tolerance got lower and my emotions got stronger. James would totally ignore me, totally reject me, then when he did talk to me, it was nothing but complaining. Finally I just told him to talk to someone else, cry the blues to someone else, because I’m sick, I’m bleeding, I’m tired, and I don’t want to hear it. Boy, that felt good, I finally told him what I was thinking, and I didn’t care how it made him feel. It made me feel good. That was the continuation of my healing. I started speaking my mind. I quit worrying about hurting his feelings, and I started worrying about my own . We started communicating. I didn’t hold back, and I spoke my mind. Yes, I was still sick physically, but I was getting healthier emotionally.
Christmas of 2000 we went to Maryland, where I was going to have exploratory surgery to see if any of the endometriosis or surgeries from it, was causing the problems. At this time I had only been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. As I was scheduled for surgery, when I went to my pre-op visit, my doctor sent me to a Gastroenterologist in Maryland. He told me that if the GI doctor says to operate, he would, but if he didn’t, there was no way he would cut me open again. He had already done five surgeries in my lifetime including a hysterectomy. There was no way he would do it again unless it was absolutely necessary. He sent me to a specialist, who did a colonoscopy the next day (my second since the illness started.) He told me that I had untreated Crohn’s Disease and that he was prescribing IV therapy. I hated IV’s, but I was ready to try anything besides surgery. Removal of my colon was the last option, and I wasn’t ready to go there yet.
I came back from Maryland and started my first treatment in January of 2001. Within two months, I was in complete remission, truly a miracle from God through this wonderful medicine. I was getting my health back, slowly; it took a long time to get my energy back, but slowly and surely I was getting stronger every day.