The Day that Changed Our Lives Forever

July 12, 2015... nothing special about this day.  According to Wikipedia, it is the 193rd day of the year with 172 days left in the year.  No one really special was born on this day; nothing of much significance happened on this day in history.  However, for the Tanner family, this day will forever go down as the day that changed our lives forever.  July 12, 2015 was on a Sunday.  It was supposed to be a day like any other.  However, it soon became our worst nightmare.

I woke up around 8:30 am and just laid in bed for a few.  We were in Mobile, AL for a whirlwind weekend of a wedding, a graduation and a day at the beach.  We were packing up getting reading to head back home. We were staying the weekend with my sister and our time was over.

I got up kind of surprised that Rusty, my husband, wasn't up yet.  He always gets up way earlier than everyone else.  However, he was still sleeping like a baby when I got up.  I went into the kitchen and fixed some breakfast and was sitting at the table with my sister and kids when Rusty got up.  He came into the room and we expected him to speak to us.  He always said "Good Morning" to us or "Hello, Beautiful" to our daughter.  He did not do that so that was the first concern.

Then, he sat down to and proceeded to eat three very large bowls of cereal.  Not completely out of the ordinary but still in excess since we were planning on eating a little bit later for brunch.  During this meal, he was unusually quiet. When he did talk, he wasn't making a lot of sense but nothing that was alarming.  It was small things at first.  I thought he was mad at me or upset at something but could not put my finger on it at the time.

The first really unusual thing was when we asked him to locate our small dog.  To which he responded he didn't see her.  However, my son, Jackson, noticed the dog standing right beside Rusty and pointed her out.  Rusty said "Yes, that's Chloe."  We told him we were asking where she was and he acted like he didn't know.  He just shrugged and moved on.

We all got ready to leave.  Rusty was packing up the cars and doing basic traveling "honey do" type of things.  Nothing yet was overly alarming.  Then, Rusty came in and he just looked funny.  I still couldn't put my finger on it.  But, he was slurring his words a little and making sense less and less as time went on.

I asked him what was wrong with his face.  He said "Nothing."  I asked him to look at his face in the mirror that he looked like his smile was drooping on one side.  He turned to the mirror, then back to me and said "The mirror doesn't lie."  We were perplexed by what he meant.  A few minutes later, he turned to the mirror and back around at me and his whole face looked like it was melting.  I realized he was having a stroke.

We rushed him to the hospital.  From there they did some quick tests and thought he was having a diabetic incident since his sugar was 725 or thereabouts.  However, I knew.  He was starting to say things off the top of his head that made no sense and could not recall basic information like names of family members.  I was scared to death.  The doctor at the first hospital came in and said she believed he was in stroke phase and needed to be transported to another hospital that had a Neurology ICU.

He was transported by ambulance to another hospital where he stayed in ICU for 7 days.  This was the worst time of our lives.  I was scared to death.  This was our rock.  He was the glue for our family and now he was fading.

On the 8th day, he was finally stable enough for me to transport back to Birmingham, AL where a rehabilitation hospital was waiting on receiving him for rehab.  He stayed there the maximum days (two weeks).  He went through so much during that time and I was at home worrying myself sick.

For me, it was the fear of the unknown.  We are not wealthy people by any means.  We haven't "saved for our future" like most people say they do.  We lived paycheck to paycheck and enjoyed doing things with our family.  So my worries were all about how we were going to survive.

Life hasn't been easy for us.  So many things have changed.  I still worry month to month how we are going to make it.  It is not easy when you go from having a paycheck every two weeks to getting paid once a month.  I have learned how to budget creatively and make sure we get through it.  What has really stunk is going from making a GREAT six figure salary to being reduced almost 75-85K a year.

I don't know how we have done it the past year and a half unless I totally and completely give all glory and honor to God.  Sometimes, I hide my face because God has totally taken care of us but I've been mad at God in the process. I am mad that at 46 I have gone from having a loving marital relationship to one strictly that is a caregiver situation. I don't think anyone realizes how exceptionally hard this has been.o

It is hard because no matter who you are you want intimacy.  God created us to be intimate people.  He created man because even God desired an intimate relationship with us.  The want and desire for intimacy doesn't stop just because your health has been affected.  I still desire someone to hug me when I'm sad or  touch me just to show me feeling or emotion. I still long to hear someone tell me they love me without me feeling like I'm having to say it first in order to get it out of them.

Ya'll this is tough.  I am not going to lie.  My heart screams out for this nightmare to be over.  I scream out to have a relationship with my husband like what we used to have.  The realization is though that we may never have that relationship again.  I know God can perform a miracle and I used to think that may happen.  However, the longer we move away from July 12, 2015, the more I realize that we may never have that miracle.

July 12, 2015 will go down as the day that changed our lives forever.