Dejavu

I thought that once I got Bob on the medication he would simply calm down, but as usual. Bob's body never reacted to things the way I thought they would.

I don't know if it was the patch they put on his arm to calm him down or the trazadone, but something either set off his desire to just rip and run or he was coming out of his skin. Valium withdrawal was unpredictable.

I took him to another AA meeting the next night, but this time instead of being grateful to be there he came out angry. I was not in any way ready to deal with this. I must have said something to really make him mad and he opened the car door and jumped out. I know he just wanted to get drunk.

That's what he always did before getting drunk when I was around. Pick a fight about nothing and use it as an excuse to blame me for picking up a drink.
He was screaming at me calling me terrible names and I was just sobbing. I had no idea what to do but I did know what not to do. I did not just drive off and leave him alone like he wanted me to.

Now if you recall, I'm the first one to say that I am one hell of an enabler. I was not about to leave him wandering around alone on the Pacific Coast Highway. Maybe a saner person would have just let him do what he was going to do, but I never could do that. I followed him slowly and begged him to get back in the car. He finally got in and we drove home. Well we dodged a bullit that night, but it would not be the last time he would jump out of the car.
I called one of his friends from the program and begged him to come over and talk to Bob. Don't forget, I didn't want to ever deal with this insanity again, I couldn't do it. Plus I had just about gotten comfortable with the fact that the marriage was OVER. This was a terrible place for the two of us to be in.

Bob knew how miserable I was. Even though I was trying to help him, it was almost like he resented me for it or maybe he realized he should have never called me to let him come home. Because at that moment all he wanted to do was drink and now he couldn't. I was there watching him. I don't even remember if he had his car back home. The night he left for good he drove it into town and probably left it at the studio. He was taken to rehab in a limo. If I remember right, I think that's why I had to drive him. He must have felt like I was watching his every move and I was.

It seemed like an eternity but Dustyfinally got to the house and told me to leave and go spend some time with his wife at their house. I was so happy to get out of Bob's presence. This night I remember Matt stayed at their house. The reason I remember is poor Matt was so allergic to dogs, and they had a huge Great Dane who of course jumped on Matt's bed when he was sleeping. Dogs just love following Matt around, they love him Poor kid just what he didn't need a one hundred pound dog licking his face in the middle of the night.

It's amazing how those little things just stick out in a person's mind. I remember so clearly being at their house and his wife being so kind to Me and Matt. They had dinner for us and really tried to make us feel better. Matt of course didn't even want to take a drink from one of their glasses. He just didn't like being there.

It was so bitter sweet because we had been a model family in the community.
I had always been a bit judgemental of this woman because her husband was in and out of sobriety while Bob had been sober and I couldn't understand why she just didn't leave him, but here I was tyring to find a way to stay in a marriage myself, in spite of all the insanity that was going on.
Dusty spent several hours with Bob and calmed him down. He called me and said it was OK to come back home. I really didn't want to leave, but I had to.
Little did he know that Bob was going to hold that against me for a very long time. He was raised to, as he would put it "We don't wash our dirty laundry in public". In his mind I had committed a cardinal sin. I had shared our deepest darkest secret with someone else.
It was one of the reasons' I believe he had so much trouble with the twelve step programs. He wanted to hide all those demons and secrets, not really share them with the locals. Especially in Malibu, where people in this community just seemed to thrive on other people's misery.
Bob had now fallen from his pedestal. After years of being the man who flew Angel Flight missions, and built the local Karate Studio, he was now just another Alcoholic
who had no sobriety. A Newcomer. God how he hated that term. He was normally a very humble guy but that hit him where he lived. It took away all his self esteem and I guess his dignity. Something he had worked so hard to try and regain in those fourteen years of abstinence.

So the cat was out of the bag and now most of the people that we knew had now heard about Bob and my situation. Small towns are not the place to live when something this terrible happens. Word spread like wild fire.

After all those years of not going to any meetings here we both were back at AA and Al anon. God I hated Al anon so much that I would go to more open AA meetings than any non alcoholic I ever met. At least I felt hope there. I never understood why someone would go to Alanon meetings and complain about their lives, when I felt that all they had to do was leave a horrible relationship. I know, I was as addicted to Bob as he was to drinking, but I had given this marriage a time limit. I did not marry him "until death do we part", I only married him through Sobriety. Now I was totally conflicted.
I never dreamed that our son would beg us to not get a divorce. I never wanted to be one of those people who stay in a horrible marriage for the sake of the children, but that was exactly the path I was going on.

I simply did not have the courage to walk out at that time. I think I was scared of what would happen to all three of us. I kept trying to convince myself that it was the right thing to do by giving Bob another chance, after all, it was only one slip, and one little affair. How much did my son's emotional well being mean to me?
It meant everything. I would stay with Bob for the sake of our Son. He was more important to me than my own feelings about the betrayal. After all, I was a pretty good actress around the family, I knew if I had to I could just get through it somehow.

During Bob's stay in the Hospital I had started to make plans for Matt and I to go to England with his sister. We thought it would be really great for the three of us to go around England, France and Spain together. Well when Bob found out that he was supposed to pay for this trip and he wasn't invited along he went crazy.
Looking back I really couldn't blame him. We had never been to Europe together in all the years we were together, and now his daughter wanted me to leave her father home. I couldn't do it. I totally understood how he felt. I never used him for money, we were always a team before this. Now things were changing so rapidly neither one of us knew the rules of the relationship any longer.
I called his daughter and told her that if she didn't want her father to come along that Matt and I would not be going either. I gave her permission to tell me she didn't want to deal with him because she had stopped traveling with us several years before this and they just didn't get along as I have mentioned many times.
Well, I'm not really sure why she made the decision to let us all go. I do know that she needed us to help her get her extra luggage back home without having to pay the extra cost, but that couldn't have been the only reason, at least I hope not.
Any way the decision was made. The three us of would meet her in London.

As crazy as it seemed, at the time it was just that little ray of sunshine we needed. It gave us something to look forward to. Something positive. I started going to Therapy to get help for dealing with Bob cheating on me and his slip. Bob had started to get a little saner and was going to a lot of AA meetings and he even got an AA sponsor. I felt that I had made the right decision, I would try to put this behind us. We had a lot at stake and many many reasons to try and work it out.

The only question was, COULD I EVER REALLY FORGIVE HIM? Only time would tell. Now I was the one living One Day at a Time. How Ironic.

I get two phone calls

I will never forget the day the counselor called me for the last time.
He told me he had thrown Bob out of the Hospital and if he called or came over here that I should not let him in.

I was stunned. The first thought I had was for Bob's sobriety. I knew how he had always reacted when pushed up against a wall like that. The problem was twofold.

One, I didn't want Bob to go back out and get drunk, he almost didn't live through this hospitalization and he wasn't fully detoxed from the Valium yet.
Second, I knew that he had no money or credit cards on him. They were at home.

That could only mean one thing. Once again Bob was going to be my problem to deal with.
Sure enough, not more than ten minutes later Bob called and begged me not to hang up on him. something I did quite often rather than listen to him scream at me.
What he didn't know was that I had already been told what had happened and also told not to let him back in the house.
No matter how upset I was at what had happened during his slip, I could never turn him out, if I did, he would not come back alive is how I always looked at it.
In the past whenever Bob had left treatment before he was really sane and sober, it would be only a matter of hours or days sometimes before he would be right back where he started.

I had no idea what would happen. My only point of reference was the past. He had not picked up a drink in fourteen years and as far as I was concerned anything was possible.
I told Bob that I would not hang up the phone and I just listened to what had happened.

He was doing his laundry and his councilor started talking to him about something, can't really remember what, but I do recall Bob telling me that he told him to in his words, "Get the Fuck Away From Me."
At that point I guess the guy just said to himself Bob was hopeless and he didn't want to deal with him. So he excerpted what little power he had and threw him out. What compassion for a fellow addict who was still suffering. I guess a little power went to this guys head. He couldn't bear to listen to Bob telling him the truth about his bad attitude. You don't just disregard someone who didn't pick up a drink for fourteen years. Yes he had a slip, but it didn't erase what Bob knew about how to stay clean and sober. In his case he just said "Fuck It" and picked up the drink, knowing well in advance what would happen. That's the true insanity of this disease.

Bob had nothing but change in his pocket which he was using for the pay phone and his laundry. I'm not really sure why they didn't allow him to have his wallet on him or money at that time, but he had nothing, So he walked to a phone Boothe with his suitcase and called me. He was lucky he even had enough change on him to call me with.

I told him to get in a cab and come home. I never regretted doing that even though the next week would be hell on earth. He was in full blown psychosis from the Valium cold turkey withdrawal. Looking back he had one hell of a law suit against that hospital, they almost killed him out of sheer neglect. It's a miracle he survived the brutal withdrawal he was put through.

I was going to need a lot of help on this one and I had to cry out to his AA friends for help. He was going crazy to put it mildly. I thank God that I never had to go through a Valium withdrawal myself. I had been told so many years before that what a terrible thing it was by a patient in St. Johns hospital years before that. He did not even begin to describe the living hell Bob was about to go through.

When he finally arrived home he was really agitated, but who wouldn't be? It started out pretty OK and then started to get tense. Whatever medication they had given him that day to prevent him from going into seizure and probably to calm him down were starting to wear off.
He was talking and pacing like a caged animal. He was hot and then he was cold. He was really trying to get a handle on his emotions, but he was loosing the ability to have any part in the way he was behaving. His body was screaming out for his medications. I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

I asked him what he wanted to do. He asked me to take him to an AA meeting up near our house. I guess he thought maybe that would calm him down, and prove to me how serious he was about getting sober and making things right with us.

As I write this, for the life of me, I cannot remember where Matt was. He never really went to other kids houses much, but I think I sent him to our friends house who's husband was also in the program. I knew I would never want him to see his father like this so I'm sure he was somewhere other than here that night. I remember so many things to the detail and I can't even remember where my son was during all this, how weird. I do know that Bob came home before Matt got out of school that day, so I must have called one of his friends Mom's to help me out.

I dropped Bob off at the meeting but I did not go in with him. When it was over I picked him up. At first he was telling me that he had met a really nice man who had had a terrible accident on his last slip and he was raising his son all by himself. He was grateful that nothing that terrible had happened to him on this last slip. It was a very sad story and it always stuck in Bob's head. For years when he saw this man at other meetings he always would talk to him and then tell me how kind and
un-judgemental he had been that night.

But when we got home, his mood was starting to change. I tried to get him to eat but he was so agitated by the withdrawal that all he wanted to do was sleep on the floor. It was like he was crawling out of his skin. I felt helpless. The hospital just threw him out, didn't bother to give him any medication to take with him or anything. They treated him like a dog, just because the counselor had an ego problem and couldn't handle someone still detoxing. I had no idea what kind of medication he was being given. But I did know that he was being given anti convalescents and maybe something for his heart after they did the EKG on him.

That was one long night. Bob was never a great sleeper, but that night neither one of us slept. He was going crazy. The first thing in the morning I got him to our local doctor, the one who had given him all the pills in the first place.
To my surprise he laid a Hugh guilt trip of Bob, never once taking responsibility for getting him hooked in the first place. He did not help him but he referred us to another doctor in the same office who we happened to know quite well because he was also in AA. He was now specializing in Addiction recovery. I was lucky to just be able to have Bob see him immediately, He probably saved Bob from picking up a drink that day, because I know he was just hanging on by the skin of his teeth to what little sobriety he had. Actually it wasn't sobriety at all, he was being given a lot of stuff to take. He was just alcohol free.

The Doctor put him back on anti convalescents and gave him some Trazadone. It did help Bob somewhat, but what I didn't know at the time, was that he didn't respect this guy at all because he had been taking all kinds of medication and claiming to be sober. In those days, there was a real rift going on in AA about anti depressants and actually being sober. Half the people in the program were really against it and the other half felt you had to do what you had to do to not pick up that drink, Bob was one of the guys that felt you were not sober if you took any kind of anti depressants at that time. Bob was always judging others sobriety when he was clean and sober, funny how when he was taking all those pills for his bad back he didn't put himself in that category,and now when he should have been happy to have someone help him, he was commenting on this guys sobriety. Wow.

Guess he didn't see the irony in that. He just was crazy or in serious denial at the moment. It really didn't matter because in a few hours all hell was going to break loose again.

Bob and his Counselor

Bob was calling me everyday with the blow by blow daily accounts of just how terrible it was there.
His brother had found the place. It was famous because of Kurt Cobain having left there and then went home and killed himself.
They had an open door policy. Imagine giving someone that doesn't want to be locked up permission to come and go as they please, especially when all they want to do is get a drink or a drug of their choice. In my humble opinion, what kind of moron thinks that is going to work. Might and well just take their money and never let them in to stay. Same things.

For some reason, it gave Bob a legitimate reason to have a resentment. I agreed with him. What kind of program was it that lets the patients walk out when they want to. I met a woman who was there. An athlete who had been on a show on TV. She was given permission to get a pass to go to a party.

Neither Bob or myself had ever heard of that. In the fourteen years since he had been in a rehab, I guess things had really changed.
Recovery had become Big Business. Doctors were making a lot of money from the insurance companies. Actually it was hard to find an empty bed. Business was booming. Only problem was, it wasn't like the old days. It had become somewhat sheik to be in rehab. What a sick world.
When I first met Bob, AA was the last place in the world anyone wanted to go to, or admit they needed to go to. Now the program was littered with celebrities in every field.
I recently watched a TV show about recovery and AA. There are no sure methods for recovery. Over fifty percent of addicts relapse with or without a program. All those thirty day hospitalizations only helped line the pockets of the doctors. Not even they could figure out how to keep people from going back to the bottle or the drug of their choice.

I must say at the time I did think that Bob was right. They would find bottles of alcohol stashed in the bushes after someone "Went for a walk". It was simply unacceptable to him. He was there to save his life and people were drinking.
When he got into it with his counselor it was basically just a matter of time before the shit hit the fan between them.

They didn't like each other. Bob thought he was a punk who thought he knew it all, and his councilor thought Bob was a no it all with no sobriety.
A recipe for disaster was brewing in there.

His counselor would call me and complain about Bob. What did he expect me to do. I tried to be supportive of Bob, but I knew how he was. When he was mad, there was no reasoning with him. I tried to listen to him, but I was conditioned to think that the hospital staff would know what was best.
This time I was wrong and Bob was right. I just assumed that Bob was going through yet another horrible withdrawal. I knew from years past that Valium was the worst drug to get out of your system.
It has what is known as an "After Life". That means that it lodges into the bones and tissues and the withdrawal for Bob took almost a year. He would be crazy and then calm, hot then freezing, and he was still having occasional seizures. His eyes were dilated for weeks, he could not sleep which added to the strange behaviour. He was in drug withdrawal with severe sleep deprivation.
I got calls several times a week from his counselor. I told him that Bob had announced to me and the family that he was getting a divorce and there really was no reason to keep calling me.
I told him flat out to call Meagan.
That's when he told me she had been banned from the hospital.
I guess they figured it out soon enough that she was trying to bring him "Whatever".
I never did get the story straight.
All I know is that when I brought him a suitcase with some clothes for the month, not only did they go through all his stuff, but they went through my bag as well.
That never happened before and I'm not sure if it was because it was normal or because they banned Meagan.

Things in our marriage could not have been worse really, where I used to visit him everyday in the past now I had our son and his activities to put before the rehab visits. Actually without Bob knowing it, the best thing I could have done for him at the time was not visit him every day. I was too hurt and angry.
It did not do him or me any good to fight about what we could not change. I just backed away more than I ever had.

It truly was self preservation for me at the time. I had no support group what so ever. There were so many feelings in me that I couldn't even begin to understand what had happened.
I was really grateful for the two kids at the time. Even his daughter was really in my corner the entire time.

One Sunday she took me and Matt along with her other brother to the House of Blues gospel brunch. Bob was really upset. What the hell was he mad about? It was always like that with him. He would look for anything to turn it around on me.
He shacked up with a woman he met and he was upset that I went to the House of Blues with his children.
That was crazy. He was still blaming me for the kids knowing about her. He threw that in my face for years. Talk about misplaced anger.
I would not lie for him ever again. He broke the bond and as far as I was concerned it would never be the same and it really wasn't.

Life without Trust

As much as I wanted to be there for him this time, I could not forgive this other woman, to make matters worse, the Monday I went to visit him in the hospital I had to figure out in my own mind, what I was going to do.

I looked at his bedside table and there was a card from "Meagan". Talk about throwing salt on the wound, it hurt physically and my head was spinning. I couldn't storm out of the hospital, but I was a scorned wife, just like a scene from one of my beloved English novels. I was seething on the inside, but the male nurse asked me if I could get into the shower with him and help bathe him. What would anyone say? Of course. I loved this man and loath him at this very moment.

Nothing prepared me for this. I could handle the slip, looking back it was inevitable. But to leave me and our son for three days to be with some woman he met in a bar, well that was the last straw. Now I was the one who was supposed to nurse him back to health again. What a joke. It was moments like this, that I should have really taken a good look at the lack of support our family had. Of course, once Bob was back in the hospital, there was a collective sigh of relief on all fronts. But did anyone other than me and his kids bother to go visit him? NO!!
Imagine that? After fourteen years without a drink, he didn't deserve a visit from his brother, dad or his dad's wife. I was so busy dealing with my own issues, and so used to doing this all alone it never occured to me that this time really was different from any of the past episodes. He had a family, and a son who had never known his father like this. Why couldn't they be there for him or us this time? I will never know. I guess I had just assumed it was because of the fight he had had with his father that lead up to this moment. But I think it was just the same excuse. He didn't warrent a visit from them. Plain and simple.

It all seemed so natural at the time, but as the years have passed and life has revealed itself like an onion, I know to the core of my soul how much that hurt him.
Was he so terrible that he didn't deserve a visit? He was on his death bed, the first couple of days. He was not important enough for a visit. This was part of the root of his problem. He felt he was never respected, only tolerated and I guess the family really did just sit back and wait for this moment to happen. Well, when it did happen he once again felt the cold chill of rejection.

I wanted to run out of there and never look back myself, trust me. The fact that He had announced he wanted a divorce to his family, but didn't bother to inform me would have been enough to end it right then and there, but, he was sick and weak,not to mention alone, I guess I was supposed to take it and just be the dutiful wife once again to keep a vigil and keep the family informed of his progress. A role I had willingly accepted.

Talk about conflicted, I was more than confused. I had to talk to his brother, father, daughter, our son and really try to keep it together as best as I could.
If I had ever had the disease myself I would have drown myself in a bottle for sure. I really never experienced anything like this.
The betrayal warranted drastic measures, but he was on a 24 hour watch for his seizure's.
I couldn't just leave him alone, I stuck around as the most unhappy, unwilling spouse ever.

I refused to go to Daniel Freeman's counseling program for the family, I wanted to know what they thought they could possibly do to help this situation.

It would take a miracle for me to get over this final blow. Maybe it was my ego, but it didn't feel like ego. My heart was broken, along with our vows and my trust.

If you have ever loved and trusted someone you know how wonderful it is to never question what they are doing when they are not with you. It's sheer bliss. Trust will set you free. And free was how we had always felt with one another. There was never another man or woman I had thought, that could break our bond.

I had really believed that ours was a blessed union, God had answered Bob's prayers.
What happened? I keep asking myself.
Not only was I shocked, so was everyone who knew us. Bob had brought a strange woman into our lives. Without any sign the eye of the storm must have been what life was before this. Calm, but hell was about to break loose.
The best I could do at the time was count my blessings that he would be in the hospital for at least a month. I had some time to figure out what to do. I had no idea. I just needed my son to feel safe and OK.
It's like lying, you tell yourself and your family that everything will be OK, but the entire time you know it's a lie you can't figure out how to get out of.

The more he recovered, the less remorseful in the beginning he was. This only added to my anger. But I had not yet found the inner strength to do something openly about it.
One day his daughter called the pay phone and asked to speak to him. The person who answered the phone thought she said her name was Meagan. She called me and wanted to know who Meagan was. I told her. I saw no reason to keep it to myself. Bob was furious with me. Of course he was. He wanted me to lie for him to his daughter because he knew that she would tell her mom. That made him really angry with me.
I couldn't believe my ears. I was expected to lie for him. I felt he was lucky I was even speaking to him. There was no way I would do that for him. I told him he should have thought about the consequences before he hooked up with her, then I found out that she was coming to visit him.
He was having a little romance. I didn't even know how to react. It was a habit he had learned being a lawyer. Turn it around on the other guy. He was mad at Me? I was not going to take this sitting down.

My anger was festering under the surface. I have always felt free to tell the truth, but I always managed to be somewhat "wishy washy" up until this point. I had become a yes wife, never wanting to be right were I was now. Looking at the face of someone who had just blown fourteen years without a drink, and who had also broken our marriage vows.
On both fronts I was devastated, but I felt sorry for him relapsing, and all I wanted to do was leave him for cheating on me. But of course that emotion was still being kept inside, like a time bomb just ticking away. I wanted him to get better so that I could leave him when he was better. I couldn't bring myself to do anything before. He always had an expression. "You don't kick a man when he's down". Those words kept ringing in my ears. I had to wait.
On the outside I had learned how to hide my feelings from the family, always trying to be stoic, always trying to give him the benefit of a doubt.
It would take more than old behaviour to make myself believe some of the nice words that were coming out of my mouth.
I wanted to bury myself and cry forever. I couldn't. I had to help our son through this.
He had never known the insanity of the disease, only sobriety, all though at times it wasn't a peaceful time, at least his dad wasn't drinking.
I needed to help him understand what had just happened. His dad was a sick man, not a bad man.
I could not bring my rage into it, at least not at the moment.
Bob was really in very serious physical condition. The seizure's continued over the weeks. One night they rushed him up to the cardiac unit to monitor his heart with an EKG. He was not doing well those first couple of weeks.

The real problem was that the Doctor had taken him cold turkey off all the medication that he had been taking for the past couple of years. How could a hospital not realize that was putting his life in danger? They were punishing him for taking a drink and totally ignoring the real problem, He was in major Valium withdrawal and that was the cause of all the seizures and the heart problems.
Today if that happened I could sue the doctor and the hospital for the lack of medical attention Bob had been given.
This is the problem with any rehab program, no matter what they say there is a certain amount of guilt tripping attached to it.
Bob was made to start going to therapy as soon as he could. This is such a joke. His counselor had three years of sobriety from heroine, he had never had the amount of sobriety that Bob had and this guy was a typical example of power corrupts. He treated Bob like he had suddenly forgotten every thing he had ever learned in his fourteen years.
It the thing I had about AA. The new comer philosophy. Shut up and listen. I wouldn't listen to this guy either.
It only made me feel even more empathy for what Bob was going through. No one bothered to stop and think about what it must be like to walk a mile in his shoes and then have to listen to some young punk. I would never have done it either. This guy had no credibility. So what was three years in the scheme of things. He had no idea of the devastation that had happened in our lives. It all fell apart and the best they could do was focus on his being a "New Comer".

Nothing prepared me for this

I was thinking back about all the events that happened after that surgery and the rest of the "recovery" process from that. prepared

What choice does anyone with a physical ailment have. It simply cannot be ignored because the treatment involves medication.
There is so little one can do once this cycle begins.
I have known so many people who were clean and sober that have been put on pain killers when they go to get "Fixed" They get fixed alright, but it' more like getting a fix, as in the street lingo.

So what you may say and you are right. A life of Russian Roulette begins. Can they take the pain med without going off the deep end? There are no real answers many are fine and so many others are not fine. No one want to even begin to think about the numbers, but it is well known in AA that the odds are not in the addicts favor if they need to take meds. They are advised to have someone monitor the pills, but after a while it's up to the individual.

In my life my addict could simply not stay sober no matter how hard he tried.
After, Back surgery, there was knee surgery, then another knee surgery, then last but not least the one that finally took him out. Hemorrhoid surgery.
That all took place within two years.
I used to wonder if Bob was getting these surgeries to get the meds, that was except for his back surgery.
It was a revolving door of hospital stays and surgeries, all with the benefit of powerful meds.
Of course he had the "EXCUSE" he needed to use them and not give up his sobriety date. At this time he wasn't really going to AA meetings so no one was actually thinking like that.

One day the unthinkable happened at least unthinkable to me.

Bob went to the office, had an argument with his Dad and walk across the street to the drug store and bought himself a small airline size bottle of Vodka. His and our lives would never be the same from that moment on.

Later that evening we had plans to meet for a Volleyball game at Pepperdine. I talked to him and he was so different on the phone, he was angry, said he would not be coming and he would see us later.

Our son and I went to the game, and when we got home Bob was asleep on the sofa in our room. That was odd, because he was a notorious light sleeper, actually an insomniac.

The next day he slept until after three in the afternoon. I knew in my soul something was terribly wrong but I didn't dare think it was because he started to drink. But I knew it.

He got up and showered and got really dressed up to go out. Bob never went out at night without us, We had not had a fight, had not been fighting or anything like that. I took one look at him and I just knew what was going on. He had started drinking.

I didn't have a fight with him or anything. I told him years ago that if he chose to drink again, I would not be there to watch it again.
With tears streaming down my cheeks, I kissed him goodbye when he got ready to go. It was so surreal didn't think I had it in me to just watch him walk out the door to start a journey into hell. There was nothing I could do to stop him I had learned that from experience his life was his own to ruin. Plus he had not admitted that he had picked up that first drink yet, he didn't have the heart to tell me that the fourteen years without a sip was over. I guess I didn't want to push it because in my soul I wasn't sure if that promise I made to myself when we got married was going to hold up.

Could I really leave him for this. When I made that promise when we got married, I didn't realize I would have someone else to think about. Matt. Our son just adored his father, they had such a great bond and a wonderful relationship. I had to ask myself could I pull the plug on our lives. I simply need time to think, I was so stunned by what was happening.

Needless to say Bob did not come home that night. He did not call or anything. Now I knew for sure it was over. I was sick to my stomach.

The next day my brother in law phoned me. He told me that Bob was at the office with some of his AA friends. I said "What AA friends" He told me Megan and some guy whose name I have since forgotten.

I told him point blank, Bob had not been to an AA meeting in years and if he had I would have recognized the name. It was all a lie,
He also told me that Bob told him that we were getting a divorce.

I wasn't mad which was interesting to myself. I knew the Jekyll and Hyde personality of Bob when he drank. I simply told his brother that his entire story was a lie. Bob was fine two days ago, not this. It was then that my brother in law told me of the fight Bob had had with his dad. It all became so clear to me at least.
It was a Thursday night, and you may wonder how I could possibly remember that well, Bob didn't come home again the next night and on Friday morning my brother in law phoned me again.
He told me that Bob had called him and asked him for help After all he had fourteen years under his belt. I felt he could get past this, so did his brother, if we could just get him into a rehab center.

His brother made several calls that day and finally got him int Daniel Freeman Hospital, the same place that Curt Cobain had been before he took his life. I really didn't care where he went, I just knew that the odds of making it out alive were not good. Historically, a person who resume drinking after so many years of abstinence had a very good chance of dying.
His brother was in constant contact with Meagan that day, thinking that she would keep her word of getting him to the hospital.
Well, they had other plans for the day,
They rented a limo and spent the day going to a Meditation Center off of Sunset Blvd and they then went to Gladstones for dinner and more drinks. All on Bob's charge card of course.
Bob's brother and I were on needles and pins the entire day. Bob hadn't checked in and at times we didn't know where he was.
By early evening he finally showed up, sicker than a dog, to check himself in.
That was Friday night.
I went to see him on Monday, What I saw was unbelievable, he had lost fifteen pounds, had to have a 24hour nurse because he was having grand maul seizures. He was simply lucky to be alive.

If I was calm the night he left to go out,I was now devistated. I hadn't figured that he would spend three days with some woman, announce to his family that he was getting a divorce etc. What happened to our great family? How did this go from see you latter to I'm getting a divorce all without a fight or a hint. What we lost during those three days would never be regained.

TRUST
What had kept us together for all those years just flew out the window. I had excused all his behaviour before we were married, but this was a fatal blow to my heart and my trust. I always said that without Trust a couple has nothing.
That was how I felt. We had nothing left to hang on to. All was not forgiven this time. We were married, this was inexcusable to me. He would never had forgiven me for this type of behavior and that was the bottom line.

I felt my heart break, I really tried to be strong, for me, our son and even for him and his recovery, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, regardless of how the marriage turned out. I would never be the same after this. I had every reason to feel this way, the future would reveal itself one moment at a time from this day forward.

That was his disease in a nut shell. Put a drink in him and you never knew what you were going to get.
That was exactly why I did not want to go through a live like that with him again, but I did take all those years for granted. I believed his desire to stay sober was real, I still do, but I didn't really understand that for two years with all the medication, Bob wasn't really sober. That was hard to swallow.
All the mood swings should have given me a good look at what was happening, but I was to afraid to even go down that road. I simply preferred to ignore the signs and gamble on the fact that he hadn't picked up a drink yet.

I DIDN'T SEE IT COMING AND AT THE SAME TIME I SAW IT ALL.

Now What?

So the surgery was performed, but the only thing that it really helped was it stopped the pain that was shooting down his leg from his siatic nerve.
If you recall, I wrote once before, than even though our lives at this point seemed happy. We loved one another and adored our son, we didn't have financial problems like so many people, but we had Bob's monkey on his back to deal with.

This was the beginning of a series of Pain Management Specialists. Bob's surgeon couldn't help him any longer so he was referred to a Pain Management Specialists.

Well is anyone out there reading this has ever been in this situation, you know first hand that the Pain Management Doctors are in my opinion, just legal drug pushers. Bob was introduced to Oxcontin. Today we all know how addictive this drug is and addicts pay outrageous amounts of money to just get their hands on them. Who knows what the street value is, but it's a lot.

I should have known when a doctor tells you he has to write out a triple prescription for this medication because it's monitered by the government, this was no ordinary pain killer.
Bob was willing to do anything, he went into physical therepy as soon as possible, maybe even too soon, but he did it with his surgeons blessings. Living in Malibu we are limited to the small community resouces at our disposible.
He went to a local guy who by the way, was also an addict. He was way too aggressive in his approach because as a Black Belt, Bob was able to tolorate a lot of pain, what he didn't know was that he didn't need to get hurt to get better.
The therapist made his situation worse. Little did we know before he started that this guy had a serious problem with anger and hurting his patients and several of them were actually much worse after going to him, Bob was in the same boat.

So the doctor put him on Oxcontine and the real nightmare began. Oxcontine is a full blown narcotic. Well isn't that wonderful, an addict now on serious drugs.
At first there was not much difference in his moods, because he was in so much pain that he had been in a bad mood for so long, I almost started to think this was his normal personality.
What I know today, is that the cycle of needing more and more medication had already started. Bob knew it too.
He asked his doctor to take him off of it. It was too hard core a drug for him to justify being on it.
That's when he started his long cycle of Vicodine and Valium not to mention all the other medications that he took that I can't remember the names of.

The most important point of this is that, even Bob did not want to go back to being addicted to anything. He took himself off and the withdrawel wasn't that easy, but I was relieved that he noticed what was happening to him. I had no idea that the alternative pain medications were almost more incideous.

Talk to almost anyone who needs medical care for a surgery of whatever. They are given Vicodine. This one pain killer is more responsible for people going back out as they say in AA. Back to the bottle, which is exactly where Vicodine lead Bob. Back to the bottle.

One might ask how is that possible? Well, no matter if he took a drink or a pill, his mind was altered. End of subject. Dry Pill High vs a drink.

A New Journey

journey into my world: The Writer

Oops Hospitals can be deadly

So Bob had his much needed back surgery. The only obvious complications at the beginning, were that he was probably one of the worst nightmare patients a doctor or a nurse could ever want. Something just happened to him in a hospital room. Looking back it is oh so obvious why. He became that angry man. Complaining about everything, causing such commotion.

His dad actually had to come in and try to calm him down and apologise to the doctors. His neurosurgeon was also Bob's. His dad tried to make everything right and because they respected him so much, they bent over backwards to make Bob as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.
The lesson for me was:

YOU CAN'T GIVE AN ADDICT A MORPHINE DRIP THAT THEY ARE IN CONTROL OF, AND EXPECT THEM TO ACT NORMAL. Morphine is a heavy duty narcotic and just because he had a reason to take it, it didn't mean his state of mind was going to be good. It was far from it.

That is just my advice to the medical community. I had so little knowledge about what I was really dealing with at the time, I didn't get it.

I should have searched the back episodes of his life,stored in my mind for reasons to help explain to me, what was happening to him. Back then I didn't really see the connection. I was brainwashed into thinking he would be fine taking massive amounts of pain "Medication".
Just to jolt every one's memory, the last time Bob was given a morphine drip was after he came back from Tahiti the first time, and got a serious staff infection.
His "fiance"/madame/drug pusher, was sneaking him in bottles of Vodka to go along with his antibiotics and pain killers. So he was happy back then, he didn't care that they were about to amputate his leg because nothing was helping him, he felt wonderful, loved being high on it.
All that had to happen to wet his appetite again for drugs was just give him a little taste of morphine and every nerve cell in his body had a certain type of memory that actively cried out for more.
The problem was his tolerance was so large for anything he was given,because he had been taking massive doses of any type of medication he could get his hands on for years before he actually got and stayed sober.
The mind and body does not forget and he was right back where he left off.

It was the beginning of a terrible time in his life. Wanting to remain sober, but not really being sober. Just because your addict mind didn't actively seek the drugs,doesn't mean it won't alter your personality, just try ingesting them medically. The result is the same. A craving is set up that will not be satisfied, at least his appetite was not satisfied.

I still look back on these times and admire the strength he must have had, the courage to not go into full blown alcoholism back then. He was actively practicing what is known as "White Knuckle Sobriety" hanging on by a thread, that's how bad he wanted to stay off alcohol and beat his disease. My hat and my heart went out to him for his courage.
I never had to walk a mile in his shoes, but I can tell you this much. I wouldn't have made it. I'm not quite that strong.
Hell, just tell me I can't have a coke with dinner and just watch me order it. Imagine having such a terrible craving and knowing that if you give in to it, chances are, at least in his case, that you will end up in jail, a hospital or maybe even dead. That was the monkey on his back, day after day, year after year.

I admired him, I rooted for him, I didn't have the strength he possessed and I knew it. He went fourteen years without one drop of liquor passing through his lips. Without the help of AA. He did it just by living a great life. Those were the best years of his life, but his physical problems would be bringing that all to a close shortly.

The Writer

I have to say I was never so impressed with anyone as I was with him. If he set his mind to something he just did it.
How many people do you know that in a matter of years learn how to fly, get a black belt and write such a great script, that HBO loved it so much they actually stole his story.

Of course in this town people will argue that there are only five stories anyway, but the difference with this one was that Matt named the protagonist, and they were not smart enough to change the name. Oh it was a great story. So ahead of it's time as a matter of fact it is almost like reading the headlines in the paper today.

He would get up and drive to the office with his partner, come back and they would go to Karate and it seemed like he was really enjoying his life so completely. He had it all.
I was happy, our son was happy, I thought Bob was too. I actually enjoyed the company of his friend. We had a social life that I longed for.

During this time Bob even put together a Karate Studio for the community. He leased the space, I helped them get the mats, the rails the mirrors and within a month we had one of the greatest martial artists under one roof.
Both Bob and our son got trained by one of the most respected martial artists in the country. Bob Burbidge. He was tough. One of Chuck Norris's black belts, as a matter of fact when Bobby died I think he may have actually come to his funeral.
We all had a great time during those years, We even took my brother and his wife to Las Vegas to see Bob compete in a tournament being held there. During that competition he got his tooth chipped off. He turned and bowed off the Mat and put the tooth in my had as my brother stood there in amazement. Richard just started laughing, he could not relate to how strong Bob was. Not only was his tooth broken, I think his nose took quite a punch also. My brother loved that he got to be there for that and until this day still remembers it so clearly.
Bob was in heaven, he loved the adrenaline of it all. He was a real man's man. Tough to the core of his soul, but so sensitive at the same time.

Bobby was so tough, that I never left our son Matt alone in a class. I saw how hard on the kids he was. "I don't train Babies" is a phrase I will remember the rest of my days. He would have those poor kids in tears at times. So for five years I sat in a karate studio with our son three days a week. But it was so worth it because if you stuck it out with him, you would be respected by every martial artist around. So Matt and his dad both got their black belts from Bobby. Not an easy accomplishment. By the way I think I picked up a lot subliminally. I never walked around in fear. Hell, I had my own two personal body guards with me twenty four seven most days. I was living a happy care free life.

First Bob took his black belt test and boy did Burbidge put his students through hell to get a black belt. They had to test in front of 50 other Black Belts and they would grade every little movement. From the bend of you legs to the bend of your writs. After sitting there all those years I knew I could never do it. Little did I know that a year later my son would have to sit in front of those same 50 Black Belts. I was never more proud of them or as nervous for them as I was watching the two of them test for their belts. Unfortunately for Bob when he told his family, there really wasn't any pride in his achievement. His own dad just sort of said "Little Boys' Games".
It's funny how certain words just can cut like a knife. His dad probably didn't realize just how sensitive Bob was going to be to that statement. I wished he had just said "Congratulations" because it was right around that time that Bob started to have a major resentment toward his father, his partner and several other people.
Now I realize it was all fueled by the Valium and he was taking. In order to get through his training he had stared the Valium addiction full blown.

Once he had passed his test he started teaching a little, but spent the most of his time finishing the Script with his friend. They would drive down to Hollywood from Malibu at least three times a week and I noticed that Bob really started complaining about how bad his back was hurting him. The drive into town seemed to really be making him worse. His own Doctor told him to get a different car.
I wasn't surprised, as a matter of fact I had begged him to stop karate more than once. He had done so much damage to his already bad back during those five years of Karate, he needed back surgery really bad. The pain was shooting down his leg, he was tough but even he couldn't take that kind of pain without something. He put off the surgery and just started taking pain pills to go along with the valium. I really didn't feel concerned he had a terrible back problem, what was he supposed to do? Suffer just because he was an alcoholic? It's not humane. Our life was great. It was even better now that he actually had rented an office and went someplace to work on something he always wanted to do, Write.
It was a really well written script. Bob just had a gift for great dialog. His father even helped him to get it to influential people. That's how it ended up at HBO in the first place.

The problem was that it really doesn't matter how good a story is because as soon as some low level studio guy reads it, it's never going to be good enough. That's the cover your ass policy of studio hierarchy. I will never forget when it all ended.
Bob's story was about racism, and the Conservative Religious Right.
The studio guy loved it, but wanted to know if Bob could change it to an Indian Story.
No kidding, it's so sad it's funny. Imagine that. Right about then Bob just said "Fuck It". He never wrote or pitched another script to a studio again. He shelved his project but what he had learned and gained from that experience was priceless. If he ever was going to do anything in film it would be and INDI.

We saw the film a year later on TV. Bob, like so many others had simply been ripped off. That's life in show biz, dog eat dog. Bob had bigger problem looming in on his horizon to worry about that. He scheduled his back surgery.

Being Productive

I guess it was hard to think about all the pills because during this time Bob was quite productive. He was working on getting his black belt and writing a script with his karate friend and writing partner.

They spent a lot of time together and Bob used his friends hyper personality as an excuse for taking a lot of Valium, besides saying his back felt better with it. I wasn't worried because I did believe it would be ok as I mentioned. Bob needed something to do after his flying was abruptly ended.

Bob had been teaching aerobatic flying until one of his students crashed the plane into high tension wires. It was a miracle that they did not burn to death. His dream of flying and teaching had come to a halt, so did the days of being pill free.
When he flew he never even took an aspirin. Now that was all over. The incident was quite a blow to him. It wasn't his fault, but of course he had to be investigated to make sure he wasn't drinking or using drugs. I felt sorry for him. It seemed that in his life, whatever could go wrong did. This was one example of something he loved going sour on him.

The student pilot flew the plane ran right into the high tension wires. When they hit the wires the plane started to turn upside down, Bob had also taught EMT emergency maneuver training and as miraculous as it was, he managed to turn the plane right side up, before landing on the back of a pickup truck.
He flew out of a small airport in Santa Paula, California which had no control tower.
It is very popular with celebrities and pilots who just love the older planes.

When they hit the wires of course they snapped and tore off one of the wings. also the fuel tank was leaking fuel. It happened so fast Bob said. The pilot in control was sitting in front of the plain and Bob as the instructor was sitting behind him in a Super Decathlon. The student pilot froze on the controls as was not even thinking when it happened.

Bob kept telling him to relax and let go of the stick, let go of the stick. Finally seconds before they hit the student did let go and Bob was able to regain control of the stick. If he hadn't they would have both died. Bob had to kick the door open from the back seat, his student was just frozen with fear.

The man who owned the truck was not a very happy man. Instead of trying to help Bob and his student out of the plane he was screaming at them and threatening them. Meanwhile sparks are flying all around the fuel that was leaking. Bob got his student to safety and then ran back to get the parachutes out of the plane.

That's the kind of man he was, at times just fearless. He wasn't afraid of dying, ever. In fact there were times when I thought to myself he put himself in places and courted it. He was fearless because he at times was sick and tired of being an alcholic. Tired of having to fight the demon who was always lying in wait to creep up on him when he least expected it.

Bob was taken to the hospital for observation, he came out with a slight concussion.
He called me from the hospital, his first words were, "Don't Worry". Of course that set my heart pounding. Bob had never called me like that, I knew something had happened. I was grateful that all he suffered was a slight concussion. I had always had a fear of him flying those little planes upside down and doing dives and stuff like that. We did not tell his father what had happened. The story made the front page of the papers in Santa Paula, but their local news never hit the LA Times. We did tell his daughter and his brother I think, but Bob didn't want to worry his Dad.

I never flew in his decathlon with him, because I was terrified that once he got me in it he would just do one little loop or something. We had our son to think about, and I wasn't comfortable having two of us up there in one plane.
What would happen to Matt if we weren't around to be there for him?

The examination at the hospital proved that Bob was absolutely clean and sober, but he still had to pay $1,000 to the man who owned the company to help with his insurance to cover the plane, which was totaled and the damage to the truck.

After that incident, I begged Bob to not teach flying anymore he told me he would think about it, but he didn't want to appear like he was afraid to fly after that. It was a lesson well learned. He was a great pilot, but as a teacher, you never knew what the skills of the other pilot were. He had placed his life in a stranger's hands and I almost lost him that day. I was so grateful he had dodged another bullet.

So Bob thought about it and didn't have too long to make a decision. There was some sort of divine intervention lurking on his horizon. He took a photographer up to do some aerial photography and a few days later he got a call from his boss. Someone in the area they were photographing called the FAA. They took down the number of the plane Bob was piloting and reported that someone that morning had been flying too low above their house. They said it was the call letters on Bob's plane. Only problem with that was that Bob did not go up until after 1pm that afternoon. The plane that was flying in the morning was not Bob.

In order to appease the homeowner, the FAA launched a full investigation and Bob had to hire an attorney. This court is not like other courts. It is run by the Federal Aviation Association. It was a hung court. From the moment they called him he never had a chance to prove his innocence. They had a pilot and any pilot would do to make this all go away.

Bob had all the phone records to prove that he was not even called to go in that morning until after 9, around the time the first plane was spotted flying to low.
The log that records what time a plane leaves the hanger proved he was not the pilot of the incident. It did not matter. They suspended his license for 6 months.

It was an outrage. The FAA was out for a body, any body to appease the neighborhood in which the incident took place. I never would have believed it was so corrupt unless we had lived through the experience. Bob was told to mail his pilots license into to the FAA. He never did. He told them he lost it. They knew he did not lose it, they also knew he was not the pilot flying the plane at fault. He was not fined for not turning in his license and they never replaced it as they said they would after the six months were up. Bob was right, he would have never gotten back his license had he mailed it in.

It was a sad time for him. He lost something that meant a lot to him, his ability to fly, to feel free, to teach others. So he started taking Karate with our son.

Years before Bob had studied another system. He really needed something to do everyday to feel productive. Our son was really happy to have his dad to look up to.
It gave them something that really bonded them. The only problem was that it was not good for Bob's body, he was getting hurt.
They went full out in their workouts and his body wasn't in the best shape when he started. He went in with a bad back and before he got his black belt five years later, he would also have two bad knees.

Another Rehab on the Horizon?

Of course there were so many signs pointing to the fact that Bob was losing control of his emotions and his pill intake. His temper was flaring all the time. He was irritable or just plain out there in his own world in his own head. When he was home he was sitting in our room smoking on the sofa, or when we were going out to dinner or a movie the first thing that would happen is, We would get in the car and of course he would ask for his pills, he had me keep them in my purse. He used his back as an excuse. It started out simple enough but by the time a year had gone by he would snap until I handed him his pills, then he would have me count them to see how many he had left. He was obsesessed with counting those damn pills. He was so afraid of running out.

He would say he couldn't stand to drive any place. Sitting was bad for his back, it caused him more pain. It was an endless chain of reasons why he was such an unhappy man. He was in Hell and I didn't get it. Imagine not being able to recognize addiction when it's looking you straight in the eye.

Another bout of denial on my part. I didn't want to face the truth. I wanted to believe the propaganda put out by the medical community. We watched a 60 minutes report on how people suffering from serious pain could not possible become addicted to the medication. What a lie. I even sent for a copy of the program to have on hand just to validate the fact that Bob needed 500 pills a month, I wanted to convice myself that there was no way he can get addicted, after all that was the reassuring message to families and victims of this pill abuse. If it was on 60 minutes, it had to be true. I will never forget that episode. an elderly womany lying on her sofa writhing in pain until she took her "Pills" then a bit later, WA LA, a miraculous transformation. From non=functional to fully functiional.
How comforting it was to know he would be safe, that our family would not be affected by his pain management as it was called. PROPAGANDA I also remember the cover of TIME or NEWSWEEK declaring that Cocaine wasn't addictive also.

That was the beginning of the Pain Management years.

We both wanted to believe the lies so desperately I was willing to put up with all the mood swings, after all, I made a promise to myself and Bob that I would stand by him as long as he didn't pick up a drink, it never changed, in my head he was Sober.
Crabby, but Sober. I was once again the oh so loyal enabler.

Dejavu A new Way

Pills, Pills and more Pills.

I can't blame Bob for getting so strung out on pills because I was involved from the beginning. Our local Malibu Family Doctor asked me how Bob's back was, and I told him even after surgery, he was still in a lot of pain. The physical therapist hurt him even further. Life in our house was miserable.

Our Doctor told me to make an appointment and send Bob into see him, I couldn't wait to tell him that our family doctor was actually going to step in and help him.
What he did was prescribe many many pills. Bob was given Vicodine, Valium, another pain pill and he was getting large amounts. He started out with maybe 100 of each which was supposed to last a month or something Bob was refilling his precsciptions every two weeks by the end of several months. He was also going to a doctor in town that I wasn't aware of in the beginning.

Then there was the Karate injuries which always lead to the emergency room for a demeral shot and more meds.
He was on a rollercoaster ride with addiction again and this time even I didn't realize how far gone he was.

Pill addiction is so socially acceptable, it's even more so when your doctor is giving them to you. Our world is full of addicts that don't even know what a problem they have. Got a little ache, here's some pain killers. I learned this from experience.

I was having problems with my sciatic nerve and went to a very reputable medical firm specializing in athletes with all sort of problems. After my test were taken and all the X-rays were read I was given a prescription for Vicoden. I was told to just call a refill number 24 hours in advance for as long as need for my refills. I didn't need to be seen again. That was that. If I hadn't been watching the amounts of pills Bob needed to take to help his pain, I probably would have been in the same boat as he was in.

No doctor told me that Vicodine is addictive, that I would start to develop a tolerance for it or that I would have to take more and more for the pain relieve to work. All I was told is that I had to take them every 6 hours so that they would not have time to wear off. Once the pain cycle starts up again, it's harder to control
it.

Until this day I regret speaking to our Family Doctor and after a year and a half of giving Bob more and more pills, he went to see him fresh out of his first rehab in 14 years and our doctor gave HIM a lecture on how he abused pills, taking absolutely no responsibility for giving him hundreds of pills a month. Imagine that.

Reality

As most parents of college age children know, this is an incredibly stressful time for the entire family.
Bob and his brother were Stanford Grads and so were some of their cousins. His daughter was very smart and spent every summer going to summer school just to make sure that her GPA was really high. A method that I never knew about before.

If you take classes in summer it's easier and faster to complete the essential classes and during the school year you can do all the extra curricular stuff that is so important on your college applications.

Well Bob's daughter had her mind set on going to Brown. She fell in love with it.
She did not get in, but she did get into Stanford.
One morning she called her dad and asked him if he could please call her grandfather to find out if she had been accepted. Her Grandfather had been a large contributor to Stanford and had asked someone high up in admissions to keep track of her application.
Bob called his dad and that's when we learned the great news. His daughter had been accepted into Stanford. He immediately phoned her to give her the good news. It was only hours before the mail had come so she knew a little bit in advance.
The entire family was so happy.

Her Grandfather was having a Passover dinner the next day and we brought balloons to the house to congratulate her achievement. Well, instead of being happy, she of course was upset. She told us all that we should have never given her the news of her acceptance. I was stunned. We did not offer to find out in advance. She called her father and asked him to find out.

She told me that her mother was upset by her father telling her. Whether she admitted to her mom that she called him I will never know. This was normal behavior for her. Her dad did what she asked of him and then she would turn it against him.
This was not the first time that the tables had turned against Bob. Right before his daughter turned 16 her mom was out of town so she asked her father if he would take her to look for cars. He was really happy she wanted him to take her.
It was agreed that her grand-father and her father would get her the car of her choice. So off they went to look.

I got a call later that afternoon and Bob told me he had made a great deal on the car that his daughter picked out. We were all so excited. His dad had agreed to pay a certain amount so it came to a little over that and Bob just paid the rest.

They got the car to her house. We were all thinking that everyone would be so excited, but not in this family. Her Mom and step dad were really upset with him. I guess her step father wanted to go pick out the car and just have them pay for it.

When her Mom called I told her it was no problem we would just keep the car in our garage and then they wouldn't have to deal with it, if they were so upset. I never heard another thing about it. But for the rest of the time she had the car, a brand new Toyota Celica, convertible, they referred to it as the piece of shit car.
What ingrates. I know they wanted her to get a BMW, but they forgot that it was his daughter's choice not theirs. She picked it out her Dad didn't.

So when everyone was so upset with the news of her admittance into Stanford we should have not been surprised that there would be conflict once again. He could do nothing right, no matter what it was, and she always sided with her mother's opinion not ever caring how it affected her father.

How could such a wonderful moment be turned into a bad thing? That was his daughter in a nut shell. He could do nothing right in her eyes. On several occasions I tried to find out what the hell she was so upset about. I think it always came down to whatever her mom said. If her mom didn't agree, she held it against her father.
I guess no matter how book smart a person is, the ignorance is still there.

She simply could not separate one parents opinion from the other. One's opinion was written in Gold the other's was nothing except BAD. I now know that there is so much more to the anatomy of this kind of thinking. It is the product of a very confused child that needs help figuring out how to think for herself without anyone swaying her thoughts. Years of therapy have not been able to accomplish this either.

After a while it all calmed down, but this event left an indelible mark on our lives.
It was now so clear that even though Bob had not had one drop of liquor pass his lips he still had not been forgiven for past "Sins" nor would he ever be. He started to distance himself emotionally from her. It was etched into his brain that all she needed was cash to buy things and do whatever she wanted that her Mom didn't want to pay for. It is when the phrase "The Human Credit Card" started to be thrown around by Bob when referring to his daughter. He would say, "I'm just a human credit card to her. He was right.

She never called to see him to just hang out with him,but she would call me at times and ask me if I wanted to go shopping with her. That translated into getting whatever she needed, put on her father's credit cards without him having to be there to annoy her. I admit most men don't want to stand around watching a teenage girl try on clothes for a couple of hours, plus we had our son along always and he didn't have any patience after a while. How terrible of me to go along with it. I'm ashamed of myself for not doing the right thing.

I simply was tired of fighting with Bob about his family. At various times things would come up and I was always defending someone in his family to him. It was never ending. He began to have major resentments which was definitely not good for his sobriety.

I loved his family and I could never begin to heal his demons about his past actions and how they affected everyone around him. Even his years of sobriety had not gained him the respect I think he wanted more than anything from his family. It was never going to happen. He lost their respect many years ago. He had slipped from the "Golden Boy" the the family waiting for him to get drunk again.

He would sit on the sofa in our room night after night and chain smoke. I could see the wheels turning in his mind. Lost in his thoughts sometimes not even able to hear me call him or ask him a question. Our son and I used to laugh and say "Earth to Bernie" as I like to call him. Lights were on and no one was there. Many nights he would call his daughter just to hear her voice. But what he really needed was a real relationship with her. She wasn't really interested in spending time with him.

This was the beginning of him dropping his cigarettes and burning holes in the pillows, the sofa and even one night he started the bed and the carpet on fire.

At the time I did not realize what was going on. He had started taking Valium, given to him by his doctor for a very serious back problem. He had gone through a major back surgery and he was still in a lot of pain.

We had turned a new chapter in our lives. One that is even more insidious than the drinking. It is non detectable, you can't smell it. Bob wasn't stumbling around but make no mistake, he was not Sane and Sober.
Because of his addictive personality, the pills just started to replace the alcohol.
He was now obsessed with his pills. We couldn't leave the house without him counting how many pills he had in a little bottle just in case he needed them.

Later I would learn that he had several doctors to give him duplicate prescriptions.
What most people don't know is how easy it is to get several doctors to give you whatever you want when you have a real issue. His bad back was real. So was his addiction. He needed more and more just to feel better. There was no shortage of doctors willing to give him what he wanted.

At this time Bob was working on his Black Belt in Karate with our son and a friend of his. They rented an office at the Studio and went in several times a week. They were writing a screenplay together. His friend was very high strung and Bob would say that he needed the Valium just to be around him. Then he would say he was tense around his Dad and Brother. There was always a reason to take a Valium.

He would get hurt during Karate Classes and started going to the Emergency room afterwards for a cracked rib, broken nose etc. I begged him to stop karate. We fought about that a lot. I saw a pattern taking shape here. Get hurt, go to a doctor or hospital. Get a shot of Demerol or whatever and get sent home with pain pills. It is not a new thing. Many people have figured this one out. Doctors are like legal drug dealers to some addicts. They get what they want and they cannot get into trouble with the Law for it.

No one was taking into consideration the damage all the pills were having on Bob's memory, moods or even the fact that his body seemed to be creating more pain so that he could take more and more pills.

Can't buy Love

Now that our lives had normalized we really tried to be a united family, the four of us. What we never really looked at was how a child really handles adjusting to a life that they had no say in putting together.

Children cannot pick their parents, step parents, siblings or have much say in where they will spend their weekends or anything for that matter. Life is simply thrown at them, and they have to deal with it, like it or not.they have to just go along with everything.that is until they get older. That is the time when a parent should start to pay close attention to what is and isn't being said. I think we have generations now of really messed up adults that haven't ever recovered from the effects of coming from a divorced family.

No matter how sensitive we were to Bob's daughter and her feelings it seemed he just couldn't do it right. Could not seem to make her happy.
Sometimes we wondered, perhaps we should have moved further away like we had originally planned on doing. We stayed close to Beverly Hills to make sure his daughter did not feel left out but that certainly wasn't the answer. Malibu may as well have been the end of the earth. As far as the life styles went. weekends at our house was almost like putting a mirror up to her and making her face it head on. She had two sets of parents whether she liked it or not.

What she wanted more than anything was to have her parents together again, not to be from a divorced family. I think many children feel that way. She never really forgave her dad for the divorce and simply refused to believe that perhaps maybe both her dad and her mom wanted the divorce. I think it was inconceivable to her that maybe her Mom didn't want to be married to him any longer either. They were young and he was in the middle of his newly diagnosed alcoholism and the death of his Mom. It was so apparent in her every unspoken word that she was not happy. At that time she was the only one of her friends to come from a divorced family.

The resentment or maybe disappointment was just too real to ignore. She probably wished in her subconscious that her step dad was her real dad. That way she would only have one Dad and not two.

It really broke her father's heart. He didn't know how to make his little girl happy. But she wasn't really a little girl any longer. She knew how it affected him, at least I think she did, but even she couldn't help how she felt. She just didn't want to pack her bags every weekend and come to see Daddy and the other family. It's a common problem.

As a step parent I felt that there was really very little I could do to help the two of them get along except to try and be a friend to both of them. I tried my best to make excuses to Bob as to why it was OK for his daughter to not spend every weekend with us. I listened to her when she tried to explain why she couldn't come over. I defended her position every chance I got. There was a very fine line between interfering and upsetting either of them. I was very aware of how sensitive he was of her not coming over as often as he wanted her to.

Being the kind of step parent like I was, I felt more like a spectator in their relationship and more like a friend. trying to stay neutral. I enjoyed shopping with her, baking cookies going to movies, etc. When it came to other things that parents and teens have to go through, I just didn't have to. I never could have or tried to be another Mother to her. We didn't discuss the important decisions much. We didn't fight all those years and only in her later years after college did we actually ever have any words spoken in anger. Looking back our relationship was rather shallow for all the years we were in each other's lives. I was an outsider, the woman she called when she needed permission to charge something on her Dad's credit card. Of course the answer was always yes. No wonder why I thought she loved me. She just loved the fact that I never said no.

We just learned not rock the boat and hoped she would spend more time with us. Much like the philosophy that the more you protest with a child the more they want to do what it is that they are not supposed to do. We thought it was a phase she would grow out of. The moody teen age years. She never grew out of it and the distance just kept growing larger and larger. It was the beginning of the end of his dream of gaining her unconditional love again.

There were years that went by when she didn't spend any of the Holidays with her dad or her grandfather. We didn't want to "Put Pressure" on her, as her dad would say. So we didn't. Our family rarely saw her even on Father's Day. She spent it with her Step Dad. He didn't want to upset anyone. We were basically given the one week Summer Vacation and the One week Winter Break. There were a total of seven of us in the family. So that meant we got together for most of the birthdays. The Obligatory birthday dinners. In the end even that would be put on hold when she grew up and went to college. Bob's dreams of a close knit family of four was more than over. It was too painful for him. He carried on with us. We were the "Three Musketeers".
We did everything together.

We just stopped discussing the fact that our feelings were really hurt. Unless Bob was willing to discuss the situation with her Mom things would never change. He would not do it. His motto of "Don't rock the boat" was alive and well in his approach. He simply let his daughter do what she wanted, this way he wouldn't loose her love he thought. What he didn't know is that every time he gave in and didn't fight to have her with him, he lost her a little more at a time.

She was now referring to her step-father as her Dad. Those words cut like a knife straight to his heart. I couldn't help that pain go away. I watched it fester inside of him for years. Little by little his feeling would surface and the bickering would start between them. In the end even our once happy family vacations turned into a nightmare for us all.
We continued to go on our annual ski trip. It used to be something that we used to look forward to so much. Of course the anticipation was great, He would proceed to buy all of us new ski outfits, trying to make her love him.she always got a head to toe new outfit, actually Bob would buy us all whatever we wanted. Then he would get upset with her if she was quiet and moody. It didn't occur to him that he was doing the same exact thing to her. Being moody. Bob had a way of making a person feel uncomfortable with just a look or the tone of his voice. Matt seemed to be the only one oblivious to his Dad's mood swings.

The first thing Bob would do when he was upset was to throw in our faces how much he spent on us. It wasn't pleasant. Looking back on those years I now realize that what was really going on was Bob wanting to relieve his anxiety with something to take the edge off his feelings. We spent years battling the "Dry Drunk" syndrome and didn't even realize it. During those years it was later pointed out to me by our Son that I was so "Wishy Washy" as he called it. I was so terrified of setting him off I was the consummate Yes wife. Yes to this, yes to that. Whatever he wanted I did, whatever he said I agreed with. It was like I had no real opinion. If I did I simply buried it. Remember "DON'T ROCK THE BOAT". Bob's sobriety was the most important thing in the world to me. I picked my battles and the battle of His daughter wasn't one I could win. I could only try to make it better for the two of them.

We would go out to dinner and they would get in arguments about silly things. Like hypothetical examples of what would happen if she dated someone not of her race.
Or the time they had a fight about some plastic surgery he mom had gotten that I guess she never knew about, but he paid for it while they were married. Unpleasantness was the norm. She didn't like the way he ate or dressed, he didn't like the way she sulked and ignored him. He simply didn't like the fact that she didn't like him for who he was. He made it worse trying to make things better.

One year he brought her boyfriend along with us hoping that maybe they would connect again. All her friends liked him. He was really cool. She never got it. Blame it on Teen-age angst, hormones I really don't know what it was. Finally, she just stopped coming on our family vacations.

Now the bad times really reared their ugly little heads. It wasn't better without her it was more obvious that he had lost the love of his beloved daughter somewhere along the line and he couldn't regain the once great love she had for him.

Who knows how a child goes from loving a parent to being repulsed by that same parent.It happens all the time, he was experiencing what a lot of parents go through with their kids. So what if She criticized everything he did, said or wore. I felt sorry for him and for her. I'm not sure if She ever saw how handsome, funny and cool he was. She wanted him to be just like all the dad's the other Beverly Hills kids had. She even wrote about those feelings in an essay to get into college. They were just like Oil and Water. It would never change.

Pure Joy

Being a Mom for me is pure joy. It was something that I never sought. In fact I didn't think I would ever have children. I had some physical issues and I just accepted it. But when Matt was born, our lives changed for the better.

I don't think I know of two people that were happier. We had gone through so much in the past six years and to have it all turn out with this smiling beautiful baby was surreal. We had a real life miracle baby and God answered Bob's prayers.

We were lucky. Neither of us had to go to work and we spent all our time being a family and being together. We now had two children. We didn't get to see his daughter much because five months before our son was born, her Mom gave birth to her new son.

It must have been hard for his daughter. No child likes to pack a suitcase for the weekend trips and we understood that she was being asked to leave her "Life" during the week and come to her "other" house to see us and her brother every weekend. We just wanted her to be a part of our lives and to get to know her new brother.

When Matt was four months old we all went to Hawaii for a family vacation. It had been years since Bob had been able to do anything special with his daughter. It was important to him that he make the years drinking up to her. He wanted more than anything to make her happy, to try and give her whatever her heart desired. He wanted her to know that she was still the love of his life, nothing was going to change that, certainly not a new baby.

We had a wonderful trip. We spent the day's at the beach and at night we tried to just spend our nights with Marisa alone. We left Matt at the Hotel with a sitter. We were bonding the family together. Bob always felt that he had a lot of making up to do to her. He tried his best and to the best of his ability, he never strayed from that goal. Make his daughter happy, make all the things he was not proud of go away. It was important to both of us to make sure that she did not feel that she was not taking a back seat to her two new brothers. Actually her dad and I now went out of our way to make sure she knew how special she was to us. We began spoiling her and giving her anything she wanted.

At the time it really seemed like we were doing the right thing. Many years later, I'm not so sure. It seems we failed in our parenting abilities. We failed to give her the proper boundaries. It would come back to haunt us both later on. We had the best intention with her for her entire life. We failed to do a good job.

Sometimes being a parent means having to risk your kids be mad at you when they don't get what they want. Bob was not willing to take that risk. He simply couldn't do it. Even when he wanted to make her come to see us on the weekends because he missed her, he didn't force it.
The years went by and she came over less and less. Bob suffered in silence at first and later became pretty verbal about his disappointment. But never to her or her Mom. He didn't risk the disapproval. The years of drinking made him feel like he didn't have the right to demand anything of her.
I wish he had found the courage to say something. In the end his daughter was probably the thing we fought about the most.

If he expressed his anger and I agreed, he turned it on me. I learned to keep my mouth shut for many years, but even I couldn't do that forever.

We simply put all our time and effort into our son. He was the love of both of our lives. The three Musketeers is how we referred to our self as.

When Matt was two we moved out to Malibu. The drive to Beverly Hills to pick up his daughter became a nightmare. Bob had a terrible back problem and His back was always bothering him after a two hour drive there and back and the fact that his daughter would barely speak to him all the way home only made it worse.
There was a subtle storm brewing on the inside of both of them and all the money in the world wasn't going to stop what would happen. The more they tried to be close the further apart they were becoming and the more tension they would bring into the house.
She was living two completely different lives. Her life with her Mom was the one she embraced. After all her house, her room, her school, friends, family etc. were all in Beverly Hills. Disrupting her routine to come to our less than glamorous life in Malibu wasn't her thing. We had an angry child in our mists, silent, but angry.

Finally

Well two weeks later I actually went into labor it was around 3 am put I waited until the doctor's office opened because my contractions were pretty mild and far apart.

When I finally did call the Doctor he told us to go to his office and he would meet me there. He didn't think I had dilated enough to actually go to the Hospital yet.
I was so confused I had no idea what I was supposed to be feeling. All I knew was that I didn't want to drive all the way back to Santa Monica from Beverly Hills and then back again once labor was really full blown.

I guess I was nervous because of all the complications I had experienced. I really thought that I would give birth relatively fast. Like the baby was just going to come flying out, silly me. I was fully prepared to have a natural child birth experience, no drugs, no inducing nothing.

We called Dad and he arranged for us to wait in his office at the Hyatt on Sunset. It was so much closer to Cedars where I was going to give birth.

We hung out there for several more hours and when labor started up again we checked into the hospital. Then labor stopped they wanted to send me back home. I refused.
I asked them what I had to do to get labor going and they told me to start walking.
I must have walked the halls for hours.
My father-in-law and brother in law came with dinner for Bob and they all took turns walking me up and down the halls that night. It was so surreal. I really had no idea how much time was passing. But after twenty two hours of labor a very sweet nurse asked me if I wanted something. I asked her what she had. I was so over the whole Natural Child Birth experience I can't even tell you.

The anaesthesiologist came in and suggested that he give me a spinal epidural. We agreed. The problem was, this was 1984 in Los Angeles around 5:30 am. He was totally loaded on some kind of drugs. He was telling jokes, doing magic tricks and actually did the epidural wrong. The baby went into Fetal Distress, and my blood pressure started to drop really fast. I had an emergency C Section.
Even in the Operating Room this doctor was still doing Magic. Bob was freaking out, he normally had a very bad temper but he was helpless. At any moment he was about to loose me and our son. My Doctor delivered my son less than five minutes later and he was fine. They put him on my chest so I could see him and then they knocked me out to put me back together again.

My Doctor was so apologetic he thought we would sue him and the other doctor plus the Hospital for the ordeal we had all just been through. We were just so happy our son was OK, we never did do anything to that doctor. I was hoping he would be turned in by my Doctor. He may have been but I didn't want to go through all the legal stuff. Especially with a brand new baby.

I had to stay in the Hospital for several days because of the medication I had to take for the pain. I was on a Morphine Drip. I didn't feel a thing. Bob was so concerned that I wasn't getting enough pain medication that they "Asked" him to leave the hospital that night.
So much for a natural Birth. I was high on Morphine and my husband was experiencing some sort of dry high anxiety. It is just that was it always went. We had a great life, but what could go wrong would go wrong.

He left and I got a good nights sleep. Probably one of the last I would have for many years to come. My son was and is a total night owl. He never slept. He never cried but he was always awake.

Life was getting really fun and interesting.

Preparing for The Birth

We were just like any other expextant couple. We started to prepare our baby's nursery. It was all such an exciting time. During this time we made sure to include his daughter in what we were doing. She was still wanting to come over and see us on the weekends at that time.

I never really gave it much thought, but as I look back I often wonder why no one I knew ever gave me a baby shower. I guess my life with Bob had always been quite isolated. My family was all in Wisconsin, and he only had his Dad and Brother. No one from our AA friends really cared about us much either. I guess they were all betting that it would never last. People are funny that way. There was no shared joy just curousity about when it would all fall apart.

We knew better. Bob didn't return from Hell to pick up another drink, at least not for many many years.

Two weeks before my due date my doctor had me come into his office and he removed the stitches that were securing my Uterus. He sent us directly from his office to the Hospital Maternity Waiting area. We were all convinced that our son was going to just be born that night.
I wasn't really sure what was supposed to be happening, being my first time in this situation, but nothing happened. We sat there for over two hours, just waiting. It seemed rediculous.
I called the Doctor and asked him if I could just go home. All those months of thinking I would lose the baby didn't happen. And he sure wasn't ready to be born tonight. Not a single contraction happened.

We went home.

By this time I was so big. Not being able to do much more than sit and eat had taken a toll on my body. I went from 118 to 180 something. I was fat and uncomfortable.

We were Living a Normal Life

Our life had become so normal it was eerie. How does a person go from high drama and insanity to more than normal in less than a year.
Well I'm living proof that it can happen. The miracles are just around the corner if a person just doesn't pick up that first drink. Sounds so easy, doesn't it?
Well there were days that were living hell for Bob. He really didn't want to drink, it's just that the same old compulsion to drink never really left him.
At this time in our life I really did not understand how a DRY DRUNK could alter his personality so completely, but it could.

As happy as we were about the birth of our child the pressure was starting to build up in side of him. A combination of Bob's old pattern had reemerged. Bob had always experienced in his earlier attempts of sobriety that horrible grey area where he wasn't drinking, but he wanted to really bad and his behaviour was almost like he was drinking.
I had been told that I would probably never have children and don't forget, I had been with Bob for five years before I married him so this was definitely not something he was prepared for.The pressure of having me fairly out of commission and his trying to launch an acting career had begun to stress him out.
I was ordered to have an almost total bed rest pregnancy. All the things I used to do were not put on his shoulders. I couldn't lift anything, couldn't do the marketing really couldn't do much of anything.

Bob was used to me always looking after him. He was in strange waters when I needed him to take care of me. He now had to do almost everything, but clean the house and do the laundry. I could see the mood swings start to happen all over again for no reason.

It started out very subtlety, We were walking down the street in Beverly Hills one afternoon, and he started telling me I was fat. I was simply too stunned to argue with him. I started to cry. I couldn't believe he just told me I was fat. Of course I was fat, I was caring our child. Instead of realizing he had hurt my feelings, he started to get really mad at me for "Making a Scene" by crying. Of course this only made things worse. I think most women are more sensitive when they are pregnant, but I always heard these stories about women feeling so beautiful when they were pregnant, and how great they felt.
I was not having one of those experiences at all, I was never heavy in my entire life and I didn't see that one coming. The tension just kept building that day for some reason.
I still remember what I was wearing, that's how traumatic that day was for me. I had black stretch pants on and an over sized white men's style shirt. Simple but classic.

Things just went from bad to worse. I don't remember what we were doing in Beverly Hills that day, but we just went back to our condo in Santa Monica.
Bob was literally acting like a caged tiger. Nothing I said or did made him happy that day and I needed to be consoled for how mean he was to me. I think I may have asked him to apologize or something and before I knew it, he hit me in the stomach.
Obviously, it wasn't an all out punch, but there was the taboo that was broken. YOU DON"T EVER TOUCH A PREGNANT WOMAN NO MATTER WHAT. There was no turning back from that moment on. I was hysterical, not from pain, but from sheer terror. If he could do that, what else could he do? I had seen the bad side before, I never dreamed I'd be looking at it again, in my condition especially.

I really don't know how Bob didn't drink through that day.He promised God he would stay sane and sober if he would only give him a second chance at another family and a son. It was all just moments away from shattering our dreams.I can't imagine the instant panic and guilt he felt.

The Other Bob had stepped out into the open that day, and he couldn't seem to control it. I saw the panic in his eyes. We were at a serious cross roads in our life. The very foundation of this marriage was at risk here. I told him if he ever picked up another drink, the marriage was over. He saw his hopes and dreams die in his mind, if he listened to the demon inside his head. He did the only thing he could do to save me,the baby and the marriage from the inevitable pending disaster.
It was a very scary place for the both of us to be in. I couldn't defend myself if I wanted to, I have never felt so helpless and vulnerable in my life. I was literally at his mercy. The next thing he did was an amazing act of love.

He called his dad's house, spoke to the house keeper, and drove me over to have Gladys take care of me.He knew that if we spent any more time together especially with his frame of mind at the moment, anything could and would happen. He just couldn't handle his emotions. So in order to protect me, he did the smartest thing he could have done, he got me to a safe location where I would be taken care of and he would not be able to do anything else to me.

Gladys was so kind to me. She put me into bed to rest because I was so upset and stunned that he would do that to me.I think she was afraid I would miscarry. That's how afraid we all were. She stayed with me and told me to stay calm, because no matter what happened I needed to take care of myself for our baby. She also told me that, the child I was carrying was mine. There wasn't anything that could ever separate me from my child. She just had a gift for calming people down. I totally relaxed and was grateful for our couple of days together.
During those few days, Gladys told me so many stories about how much Bob's mother loved and understood him. He was always plagued with some sort of anger issues, even at a young age, she told me. His mother would always forgive him and tell Gladys that there was something not quite right with him. She forgave him everything always.

It finally dawned on me, why Bob loved me so deeply, but could be so cruel to me at times. That was how he treated the one woman he adored more than anything, His Mother. I too, always forgave him everything he had ever done. I was his rock, I of course did forgive him. Gladys nursed my fragile nerves and me back to health and then Bob came and took me back home a few days later. He was feeling better emotionally. He was back to his normal sweet self. Back in those days I could actually just forget and forgive. We did not dwell on it and we moved on. We had too much to be excited about. The fact that Bob didn't go out and drink was all I needed to know because that night and the next few nights following I really thought that he would go out and get drunk, but he didn't. I'm sure he wanted to but he didn't.
The time alone gave us both a chance to calm down. We never really fought about anything big. It was always the little things that got to us. A pattern that followed us our entire time together.

The rest of the pregnancy went along as most peoples. Except for one thing. Bob was now really so much kinder and really didn't mind that I needed his help. I think I made him feel better by needing him after what we had just gone through. He was cooking me breakfast every morning now to make sure that I was going to have a healthy baby. He made me the only thing he knew how to cook. Scrambled Eggs, every morning, scrambled eggs.
I have to tell you that till this day I have such an aversion to scrambled eggs, but I didn't tell him that at the time. I needed to show him that I forgave him and I knew it would never happen again and it didn't.
Of course we were normal and would have the occasional stressful days, the great times and the bad days. We were just like anyone else we knew only we were happier. We felt we were witnessing and living a miracle. Not just living a normal life.
We felt we were blessed but we also knew that if something could go wrong it would.

I started to break out with little red "rings" on my legs. The doctors did all sorts of tests on me, but they had no Idea what it was. So on to the next specialist it was. Then came the bomb shell. The Doctor said I had "Lupus".
We had never heard of it. We wanted to know what to do next and he told us that it was an incurable disease which could be fatal.

To be honest with you, the only thing I could do was to just block that out. I did not focus on what he said and quite frankly, I just didn't believe it. I had no desire to be sick, especially with a fatal disease.
I got better, and the spots never came back.

Is it mind over matter? I think it was. I would not engage that thought. Nothing in the world was going to stop me from having this baby and being healthy to take care of him for the rest of my life. I never did forget those words Gladys had told me. In my soul I felt that the life of my child was going to be my responsibility. Bob would be there, but there might be a time when he couldn't be and I prepared myself emotionally from then on. Me and my son against the world. Oh how prophetic that thought would turn out to be.

There is no logical explanation to why it just went away. Either the Doctor was wrong or I willed it gone. Whatever. Here I am twenty two years later. No signs of whatever. Bottom line, man becomes what he thinks about. I thought myself healthy. I always have.