07-09-2017, 04:38 PM
Good God! It has been an emotionally exhausting few months! I haven't added it up, but I bet I have driven over 6,000 miles in the past 2 and 1/2 months!
Last time I logged in, I believe that my husband and I had just purchased our farm in Alabama. As a refresher (or if I never had a chance to share), my husband lost his position with the DOD in Charleston SC and got a job with an international corporation based out of Atlanta GA. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it...), Georiga has laws against owning the exotic pets that I raise for a living, and it initially looked as though that would be the final straw that would end my already rocky marriage. However, in the end, my husband proposed that we move to Alabama somewhere near the state-line. It was his idea, and he claimed that he wouldn't have a problem driving back and forth. After many false starts, we FINALLY found a house we both agreed on and got it for a price we could afford (though still more than it turns out the house is actually worth...).
In any case, in the begining there were still a lo of hard-feelings on his end, because he discovered that a 1 hour drive to work wasn't what he had anticipated and took every opportunity to berrate me for it (even though it was his idea...). So, we were still on choppy water even after the stress of looking for a house in an area that has only had 7 houses for sale in the past 18 months.
Things took a turn for the worse on my end, though, when it became apparent that he didn't have any intention of helping to move our belongings. He packed up his favorite cloths and an air mattress, and left me and our pets in Charleston with the statement, "You do the rest".
His supposed justification, was that he has the "real" job and pays for my life insurance so he decided that was ALL he should so...
Things went along at that pase for almost a month, with the two of us pretty much not talking. I was in Charleston packing up our possessions and purchasing a trailer with which to move them (if I had to do it all alone, I didn't want to be under the time constraints of a rental contract; we have a LOT of stuff).
I had thought that, having FINALLY found a house and no longer paying ~$2000 a month for him to stay in a hotel in Atlanta that we would be able to chat has up on the bills and be under less stress, but that didn't turn out to be so. Every week when I would balance the check book, I would find where he had purchased outrageous items for the new house (we now own LED lights in every room that change color and can be controlled by your cell phone.....at the bargain price of $800, for example).
So, things were still tense as hell between us. The only upside, for me, was that when I did get to spend a few days at the farm I LOVED it. It is pretty much everything I ever wanted in a home! Rolling acres for the animals, a big new steel building for me to run my business and hobbies out of, and it reminds me of my childhood home. My happiness with the new house just made my husband angrier, though, because he was still mad about having to drive an hour to work....
Everything finally came to a head 2 months ago. I had met one of our neighbors a few miles down the road, and he asked me over for a beer. I had a great time visiting and getting to know him and his wife before I came back home, but when I got home and my husband smelled the beer on my breath he LOST IT. He immediately accused me of everything you could possibly imagine and I finally lost my temper. I basically told him to get the fuck out!
Well...he did get the fuck out. He left and got a hotel, and blocked my phone from calling his cell phone. The next morning I got a call from my sister telling me that my mother had been taken by ambulance to the hospital for emergency surgery.
Having no way to contact my husband, I ended up loading all of our pets into my truck and driving the 1300 miles to my parents house. I was there for a week before my mother got out of ICU, and when I left I returned to Charleston.
For the next couple of weeks, I didn't talk to my husband or return his calls....and I talked to a lawyer. Some of you here know that I have put up with WAY more from my spouse that anyone would consider reasonable. I had decided to get a divorce and was getting ready to file the papers when I got ANOTHER call from my sister. As it turns out, during her first surgery, the doctor left a camera inside my mother! She was running a 106 degree fever and had been admitted for ANOTHER emergency surgery!
Lomg story short-er, they went in and discovered that the area the camera was last seen (in her small intestine) was HORRIDLY scarred and had begun to calcify! They removed 2 and 1/2 foot of her small intestine and after the surgery the doctor said that the entire area had been so badly damaged with scar tissue that the they hadn't even been able to get the camera out of it! He said they just considered the camera a loss, and threw it away with the intestine!
Back in Charleston, I tried to get back to the packing and moving, but no sooner did I get home, than my sister called again! When they biopsied my mother's intestine that they removed they found Stage 3 Colon Cancer! She was having ANOTHER emergency surgery and they only gave her a 40% chance of surviving the surgery! Thankfully, she did survive the surgery and by this time my husband was had been trying to contact me (our fathers have been friends for over 30 years and apparently my husbands father had contacted him and told him about my mother because I was still refusing to speak to him...
Well, this time on my way home, I went ahead and stopped in Alabama. My husbands cat had been sick since before our fight and the vets we took him to weren't able to diagnoised what was wrong with him. When I had been in Louisiana, I took him to my family's vet and finally got a diagnoises. He was suffering from hormone disorder. The vet gave him a hormone injection that did wonders, and also gave him a steroid injection and a victimize injection (along with special diet instructions) to help him regain the weight he had lost. The cat had to be fed every 4 hours, and I told my husband that I simply could NOT be responsible for packing, moving, and selling our house AND feeding his cat every 4 hours no matter how much I loved the cat! I also told him that if he was so unhappy that he couldn't bring himself to help with ANYTHING then we needed a divorce.
I left the cat with him and went back to Charleston for 5 days to load up 1/3 of our belongings into the trailer and bring it back to Alabama. When I got here, the cat looked AWFUL! All the gains he had made under my care had evaporated. Apparently, my husband had been too busy at work to keep up with feeding his cat and the cat had gone into liver failure due to slow starvation.
To make matters worse, when I got back home and saw the condition of the cat, I immediately took it to the nearest vet which just happened to be over the state line in Georiga. When they called me to say that the cat had to be euthanized, I told them I would be there ASAP to pick him up and they seemed confused but didn't say more. I am a Certified Euthanasia Tech, and I wanted my cat to die peacefully in his own home. Unbeknownst to me, the state of Georiga has laws that make it illegal to euthanize your own pet and the vet's office wouldn't give me my cat!
Luckily, I am not a Georgia resident and they HAD to return him to me! I am not proud of it, but I pitched a heated FIT in that vets office! On the way home, ManMan (our cat) crawled out of his carrier before I knew what he was doing and got into my lap. He purred and licked my fingers all the way home while I cried like a baby.
In any case, I still had some euthanasia drugs left from when I worked for the Wild Life and Fisheries Department, and I called my husband to come home early from work. My little man went to sleep in his own bed, with his brother laying beside him. He passed away a few minutes later here at home with his family.
My husband has been crying for days. I haven't said anything, partially because I think he realizes this is his fault and partially because I fear that if I were to start in about the cat I wouldn't be able to stop myself from just letting it all out... Though the cat was technically his, I had lived with and cared for it while he was away every day at work for 12 hours (he LOVES his job; in fact, he loves his job more than ANYTHING as far as I can tell...) and (to me) it was at LEAST as much mine as it was his. I'm crying now as I type this.
My husband spend from 7:30am yesterday morning until 9 pm last night digging a 5 ft deep grave for ManMan (the ground here is virtually solid rock). I built him a coffin during that time and we will be burying him shortly.
I am sorry for writing such a long post. I just had to get it all of my chest somehow. For those of you who suffered through reading the entire thing, thank you.
Xoxo,
Beau
Last time I logged in, I believe that my husband and I had just purchased our farm in Alabama. As a refresher (or if I never had a chance to share), my husband lost his position with the DOD in Charleston SC and got a job with an international corporation based out of Atlanta GA. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it...), Georiga has laws against owning the exotic pets that I raise for a living, and it initially looked as though that would be the final straw that would end my already rocky marriage. However, in the end, my husband proposed that we move to Alabama somewhere near the state-line. It was his idea, and he claimed that he wouldn't have a problem driving back and forth. After many false starts, we FINALLY found a house we both agreed on and got it for a price we could afford (though still more than it turns out the house is actually worth...).
In any case, in the begining there were still a lo of hard-feelings on his end, because he discovered that a 1 hour drive to work wasn't what he had anticipated and took every opportunity to berrate me for it (even though it was his idea...). So, we were still on choppy water even after the stress of looking for a house in an area that has only had 7 houses for sale in the past 18 months.
Things took a turn for the worse on my end, though, when it became apparent that he didn't have any intention of helping to move our belongings. He packed up his favorite cloths and an air mattress, and left me and our pets in Charleston with the statement, "You do the rest".
His supposed justification, was that he has the "real" job and pays for my life insurance so he decided that was ALL he should so...
Things went along at that pase for almost a month, with the two of us pretty much not talking. I was in Charleston packing up our possessions and purchasing a trailer with which to move them (if I had to do it all alone, I didn't want to be under the time constraints of a rental contract; we have a LOT of stuff).
I had thought that, having FINALLY found a house and no longer paying ~$2000 a month for him to stay in a hotel in Atlanta that we would be able to chat has up on the bills and be under less stress, but that didn't turn out to be so. Every week when I would balance the check book, I would find where he had purchased outrageous items for the new house (we now own LED lights in every room that change color and can be controlled by your cell phone.....at the bargain price of $800, for example).
So, things were still tense as hell between us. The only upside, for me, was that when I did get to spend a few days at the farm I LOVED it. It is pretty much everything I ever wanted in a home! Rolling acres for the animals, a big new steel building for me to run my business and hobbies out of, and it reminds me of my childhood home. My happiness with the new house just made my husband angrier, though, because he was still mad about having to drive an hour to work....
Everything finally came to a head 2 months ago. I had met one of our neighbors a few miles down the road, and he asked me over for a beer. I had a great time visiting and getting to know him and his wife before I came back home, but when I got home and my husband smelled the beer on my breath he LOST IT. He immediately accused me of everything you could possibly imagine and I finally lost my temper. I basically told him to get the fuck out!
Well...he did get the fuck out. He left and got a hotel, and blocked my phone from calling his cell phone. The next morning I got a call from my sister telling me that my mother had been taken by ambulance to the hospital for emergency surgery.
Having no way to contact my husband, I ended up loading all of our pets into my truck and driving the 1300 miles to my parents house. I was there for a week before my mother got out of ICU, and when I left I returned to Charleston.
For the next couple of weeks, I didn't talk to my husband or return his calls....and I talked to a lawyer. Some of you here know that I have put up with WAY more from my spouse that anyone would consider reasonable. I had decided to get a divorce and was getting ready to file the papers when I got ANOTHER call from my sister. As it turns out, during her first surgery, the doctor left a camera inside my mother! She was running a 106 degree fever and had been admitted for ANOTHER emergency surgery!
Lomg story short-er, they went in and discovered that the area the camera was last seen (in her small intestine) was HORRIDLY scarred and had begun to calcify! They removed 2 and 1/2 foot of her small intestine and after the surgery the doctor said that the entire area had been so badly damaged with scar tissue that the they hadn't even been able to get the camera out of it! He said they just considered the camera a loss, and threw it away with the intestine!
Back in Charleston, I tried to get back to the packing and moving, but no sooner did I get home, than my sister called again! When they biopsied my mother's intestine that they removed they found Stage 3 Colon Cancer! She was having ANOTHER emergency surgery and they only gave her a 40% chance of surviving the surgery! Thankfully, she did survive the surgery and by this time my husband was had been trying to contact me (our fathers have been friends for over 30 years and apparently my husbands father had contacted him and told him about my mother because I was still refusing to speak to him...
Well, this time on my way home, I went ahead and stopped in Alabama. My husbands cat had been sick since before our fight and the vets we took him to weren't able to diagnoised what was wrong with him. When I had been in Louisiana, I took him to my family's vet and finally got a diagnoises. He was suffering from hormone disorder. The vet gave him a hormone injection that did wonders, and also gave him a steroid injection and a victimize injection (along with special diet instructions) to help him regain the weight he had lost. The cat had to be fed every 4 hours, and I told my husband that I simply could NOT be responsible for packing, moving, and selling our house AND feeding his cat every 4 hours no matter how much I loved the cat! I also told him that if he was so unhappy that he couldn't bring himself to help with ANYTHING then we needed a divorce.
I left the cat with him and went back to Charleston for 5 days to load up 1/3 of our belongings into the trailer and bring it back to Alabama. When I got here, the cat looked AWFUL! All the gains he had made under my care had evaporated. Apparently, my husband had been too busy at work to keep up with feeding his cat and the cat had gone into liver failure due to slow starvation.
To make matters worse, when I got back home and saw the condition of the cat, I immediately took it to the nearest vet which just happened to be over the state line in Georiga. When they called me to say that the cat had to be euthanized, I told them I would be there ASAP to pick him up and they seemed confused but didn't say more. I am a Certified Euthanasia Tech, and I wanted my cat to die peacefully in his own home. Unbeknownst to me, the state of Georiga has laws that make it illegal to euthanize your own pet and the vet's office wouldn't give me my cat!
Luckily, I am not a Georgia resident and they HAD to return him to me! I am not proud of it, but I pitched a heated FIT in that vets office! On the way home, ManMan (our cat) crawled out of his carrier before I knew what he was doing and got into my lap. He purred and licked my fingers all the way home while I cried like a baby.
In any case, I still had some euthanasia drugs left from when I worked for the Wild Life and Fisheries Department, and I called my husband to come home early from work. My little man went to sleep in his own bed, with his brother laying beside him. He passed away a few minutes later here at home with his family.
My husband has been crying for days. I haven't said anything, partially because I think he realizes this is his fault and partially because I fear that if I were to start in about the cat I wouldn't be able to stop myself from just letting it all out... Though the cat was technically his, I had lived with and cared for it while he was away every day at work for 12 hours (he LOVES his job; in fact, he loves his job more than ANYTHING as far as I can tell...) and (to me) it was at LEAST as much mine as it was his. I'm crying now as I type this.
My husband spend from 7:30am yesterday morning until 9 pm last night digging a 5 ft deep grave for ManMan (the ground here is virtually solid rock). I built him a coffin during that time and we will be burying him shortly.
I am sorry for writing such a long post. I just had to get it all of my chest somehow. For those of you who suffered through reading the entire thing, thank you.
Xoxo,
Beau