Happy Anniversary...Half of my life? WOW!

Rob and I celebrated our 22nd anniversary yesterday.  May 20, 2000 was our wedding day, and though it was almost a quarter of a century ago, I remember it like it was yesterday.  We've been married for 22 years, however, we've been together 23.5 years.  That's exactly half of my life.  

I am 47.  I was 23 when we began working together, when we began to talk, joke around, share daily stories about our lives, chat about our kids, people we both knew, our families, and eventually confide in each other.  We became friends; close, trusted friends to each other.  We went on our first date October 30, 1998, an evening in Lincoln, consisting of pancakes at Village Inn and a quick stroll through ShopKo.  Nothing fancy, just us, spending time together, outside of work, getting to know each other even better.  From our first kiss, I knew he was my soulmate.  They say, "When you know, you know," and I knew.  But, now, a month over half of my life, now, I have been with this man.  That is crazy to me...I have now spent more of my life with him than without him.

That's not to say we haven't had our share of bad times.  We've gone through the worst, the absolute worst.  We dug ourselves out of the deepest of holes, both within ourselves individually, and in our marriage.  There is a song, "Remember When" by Alan Jackson, and it perfectly tells our story.  From, "We came together, fell apart, and broke each other's hearts," to "Remember when, we said when we turned gray, when the children grow up and move away, we won't be sad, we'll be glad, for all the life we've had..." that is our story.  No matter what we go through, in the end, it's us.  It's always us against the world.  It's been that way from that very first night.

There were times in our marriage when I would be so angry at Rob because I'd be sick, and I'd feel that he had zero empathy, zero compassion for me.  There were times I needed him to be there for me, to comfort me, and he wasn't.  I remember telling him, while hurt and angry and in tears, "When you said 'in sickness and in health' you didn't mean a word of it.  If I were terminally or had a chronic disease, I'd be on my own because you can't even help me out while I have something as small as a UTI or a sinus infection!"

When I got Covid 10/10/21 and he tested positive 5 days later, then Harley 5 days after that, it's like we lost 3 weeks of our lives.  It was all just a blur of exhaustion, muscle and joint pain, burning sinuses, coughing, shortness of breath, weakness, and misery.  But, while they recovered, I didn't.  I kept trying, I kept thinking it was just taking some time to get back into a routine, like when you have the flu for a week, and it takes two more weeks to feel all the way back to normal.  But the symptoms continued to increase, new ones popped up, and over the course of the next three months reality really sunk in.  This wasn't a case of "just push yourself and you'll make it" or "it just takes awhile to get over it" because I was having more and more symptoms, and noticing the cognitive dysfunction as well as the physical ailments.  

It was scary, and I felt so alone, so judged, so disgusted with myself.  But Rob stepped up.  After me being so frustrated all those years by his lack of empathy when I had a bad cold or a stomach bug, when it really counted, there he was.  He has been by my side at every appointment, through every test, evaluation, and therapy session.  He watches and learns from my PT, OT, SLP, and Neuropsych sessions.  He reminds me to use the skills they're teaching me, he monitors my fatigue level, he watches for signs that my heart rate is up, and he makes me take seated rest breaks when it gets to that threshold level he's learned about from attending my therapy sessions.  He can recognize when I'm getting dizzy almost before I do, just by my eye movement.  

Stairs are something that have been difficult for me throughout this entire time.  I get so incredibly out of breath, and my heart rate will jump up to 140-150 in a matter of seconds.  It's a goal I've been working on in both PT and OT.  This is difficult because there are stairs leading up from our basement, where our garage opens into.  There are also stairs leading up from the curb to our house.  The ones in front of our house are broken up by lengths of sloped sidewalk so they aren't quite as difficult, but the ones coming up from our basement are steep.  It is very difficult for me to walk up those without extreme fatigue and shortness of breath, as well as leg pain.  

One night, after running a couple of errands (I stay in the vehicle, as it's too difficult for me to go in and out of places), I was having extreme leg pain, and my heart rate and shortness of breath were both really causing me to struggle.  Rob and Harley went up the stairs ahead of me, as it takes me a pretty long time to go up them while trying to concentrate on my breathing techniques and tolerate the pain.  I tried to follow.  But I couldn't do it.  The pain was so intense, and my breathing was so labored, I felt as if I couldn't catch my breath at all, even using the tools I'd been taught at Madonna.  

I sat down on a spare wooden dining room chair we have in our basement and tried to get up the strength to try the stairs again.  I was trying to concentrate on my breathing and clearing my mind.  However, it's almost as if I blacked out or fell into some type of trance.  When Rob found me, I was cradling my purse in my arms, rocking forward and backwards in a self-soothing motion, hyperventilating, and had tears pouring down my cheeks.  When he put his hands on my shoulders to hold me still and stop the rocking, and to comfort me, it startled me, almost as though I was woken up and brought back to reality.  Only then did I realize what I was doing and what was happening.  

He talked me through my breathing, got me calmed down, and reminded me of my techniques as he encouraged me to make my way up the stairs.  I felt so humiliated and weak and like an invalid, but he never once supported those feelings.  He reassured me and comforted me and reminded me of all of the things Madonna has been working with me on.  

I had never imagined he would step up the way he has, that he would support me the way he has, and that he had the patience and the nurturing nature that he has shown me over the past 5 months while I've continued to have ongoing symptoms that are, at times, completely debilitating.  

Rob, this one is for you.  Happy Anniversary, and here's to many more years, no, decades, together, taking care of each other "in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part."