THE POWER OF LOVE

THE POWER OF LOVE

… many years ago …

I was a young bride. Yet, at eighteen, walking down the aisle to join hands with my soon-to-be husband, I thought I couldn’t be any happier. The following year, fourteen months after our first anniversary, I gave birth to my first son. If grinning could actually crack a face, mine would have split in two.

When Ken was eight months old, I found out that he would soon have a sibling. I was ecstatic with joy.

I would love to say that those nine months flew by but truthfully, they dragged. Problems with my husband began to take place and he developed an attitude that demonstrated his annoyance with having another child, especially so close to the first one.

My pregnancy lasted only eight months when son number 2 screamed his way into the world. To say my husband wasn’t happy is a mild statement. He refused to visit us in the hospital (back then a six day stay for new moms and babies was a requirement). It was my parents who brought us home from the hospital because my sons’ father went out with his friends.

Nope, I knew, then, life would never again be my rosy world.

I adjusted my “big girl panties” and did everything possible to maintain a home and be a good mom.

Jim, son number two, was only seven years old when he began having health problems. Not too sound gross, but there isn’t any polite way to say this. His bowels were a mess. We never knew if he’d be constipated or have diarrhea. My son practically lived on Pepto Bismol.

Yes, he saw many doctors, none of which could offer an enlightened diagnosis. One doctor said he had an allergy to canned vegetables. I bought either fresh or frozen. Nothing helped. I changed the way we ate. That didn’t work either.

Another doctor said he had an intestinal infection. Jim was put on antibiotics. He lost weight.

This went on and on for three years. One doctor asked if there were problems at home.

“Yes and no,” was my answer. We were having problems with my husband, but that year, he moved out. Left! Just took his belongings and left!

“Ah,” the doctor who was not a psychologist said, “that’s it, then. Your son suffers from a nervous stomach. Now that things might be better at home, he’ll calm down and his health will improve.”

I thought, Well, I tried everything else. Why not give this a shot?” The doctor gave us a prescription for a very mild anti-anxiety medication.

Between the diet, Pepto Bismol and the anti-depressant, I thought my son’s health seemed better. It wasn’t.

What I didn’t know at the time was that because of his inconsistency, he began skipping school.

Oh, you’re asking why I didn’t know. Now that I was a single mom, I needed to work to support my sons and myself (food, clothing, our home, etc). My ex supported us as minutely as the courts would allow. The rest was up to me.

Those next years were sort of a blur. With working and taking care of my sons, there wasn’t much time for anything else. I enjoyed the time when my sons and I could spend an entire weekend together. I say that because very often, they’d be out with their friends.

I seemed as though his health was mending. I thought my life was once again, rosy!!

Both boys looked and acted healthy. Wow! What a fool I was!

Now in the middle teens, they rarely confided in me with what they considered “personal problems.” Topics that had to do with girls, arguments with their friends, and their health issues were not mentioned. I always asked but never received an answer. All I ever heard was, “Yeah, mom, things are good.”

Then one spring day, when Jim was seventeen, I’d gotten a call from the school nurse. “You need to get home as quickly as possible. Jim collapsed and he has feces all over him.”

I prayed all the way home that there would be no police around to pull me over and hand me a speeding ticket.

This time, I took Jim to a new doctor in town. After his examination and testing, he said, “I can give you a diagnosis, but I can’t treat him. Truthfully, I don’t know much about the disease.”

The diagnosis was something I’d never heard of: critical Crohn’s disease.

While sitting in his office, he called a hospital in the next town. This hospital wasn’t just a critical care hospital, but it was also a teaching hospital. After asking for and receiving the name and contact information for a specialist, he also called and made the appointment. Two days later, my son was in the hospital, hooked up to all sorts of machines. The specialist said that if we had put off my son’s care any longer, well, as he put it, I “wouldn’t have a son to care about.”

Jim slowly improved and with what the doctors called a “cocktail of meds,” improved each day.

He still had a few bouts of this horrific disease, and meds were changed or replaced as needed. A proper diet was still essential.

With my boys now high school graduates and working, their social life improved. I worried less and enjoyed watching them grow into handsome young men.

A few years later, Jim and his friends decided to see a movie. For some reason, only Jim and Donna were able to go.

Six months later, Jim said he wanted to ask Donna to marry him but because of his disease was hesitant.

He explained everything to her, and Donna’s response was (and this is an exact quote): “Jim, I’d rather spend one minute with you as your wife, than never spend any time with you at all.”

Jim proposed and Donna said yes.

Two years later, at their wedding, my cousin saw me crying and said, “Weddings can be so sad, especially when you lose your son.”

I looked at her like she was crazy and said, “You don’t understand. I haven’t lost him. Came close many times throughout the years, but he’s still here. I’m crying because he’s alive and healthy enough to marry his girl.”

Now, here we are thirty years later. Because of Donna’s love and the great care she’s given him throughout their marriage, he has been in remission for twenty of those years.

Yes, Celine Dion was right. There really is power in love. My son and his wife are proof of that.