When we were driving we were doing really well. The money was great, the life was great and it was a very good time.

We had bought a nice place to live, so that we could bring Chris' brother, sister in law and their two kids to live. They didn't have the means to live in decent housing so we wanted to help. We were gone most of the time and this gave them some security.

We bought a car for them to use, so that she was not driving a car that was having issues. Chris had a dream that he was driving in the car with my grandson and had a bad car accident, so after that he didn't want any kids riding in that car.

We made plenty of money that we could pay all the bills and still have some left over. Chris' brother worked and always had a job. His wife tried to work, but we discussed the fact that she was only working to pay a baby sitter. I told her I would pay her to take care of the finances while we were driving, so that would be one less thing on my plate. She agreed, and I had to force her to take out her payments.

It worked out really good for about 2 years, until we quit driving. I had to ask them to make the car payment until I could get a job to keep the money coming in. Chris' brother thought they had always made the payments. He thought they were paying everything but the house payment. So they moved out, and we ended up having to sell the house. Then we lost the car which was fine, we still had Chris' car.

I went to work for Wal-Mart as an overnight stock crew. The rest of the crew totally ignored me. That was okay, I was used to being invisible. I did my job. Chris had gone to work for a local route driving job hauling yard trash. The truck wasn't the best, and he ended up leaving there because the guy didn't want to fix the equipment. He tried to get a job with another company that hauled the same thing or farm grain. The guy that was training him told the boss, he would never get it. Which was laughable, since he had plenty of experience. The he tried for a job hauling flowers but they never called him back, so he didn't have a job.

We had moved in with Debbie and her family until we could get something, and I told him if we ever wanted to get out of there then I needed him to get a job. Wal-mart was still hiring, and he could come there. He did. He hated it, but he went to work.

He wasn't sure he believed me about how the others were treating me, until he saw it for himself. They were all over him, wanting to be friendly and all, and when we went to lunch they told him he could come sit with them, he said 'No thanks I would rather sit with my wife.'

A few weeks later, one of the women in the group came to me and said 'You know I could take him away from you if I wanted to!' I said 'Go for it. I am NOT worried.' and she never spoke to me again.

We started working in the dairy department, and he was pulling a pallet of cheese to the floor and he twisted his foot and something inside Popped. His foot felt warm like his shoe was fling up with blood. I wasn't but it felt that way.

When he was 10 he had dropped a railroad tie on his foot and crushed every bone. It had healed but he walk with a limp, sometimes more noticeable than others. The sent him for an x-ray, but with all the damage, they couldn't see anything really wrong. He was off work for a month, and they had replaced him in the department. (there is more story here too, just not the place for it.) When he did come back, walking with a cane, they wanted him to work an area that required him to climb a ladder. He told them there was no way he could do that, so we quit.

We moved into an addition room that Dannielle had in her house. Her sons father had moved out, and she needed help with her son and we needed someplace to live. Couple of things happened about here. I started cleaning businesses and houses, and was making pretty good money. I was working 7 days a week, but I was always done in time to pick up my grandson from school and to make sure he was fed, bathed and his home work was done.

I also discovered website coding. Well it started out as style sheets that changed the way a game I was playing looked. I started talking to a 17 year old guy, SiGiS, that was learning to code as well. We got together and he taught me to actually code websites. The early days were really cheesy, but I really enjoyed doing it. I started trying to do websites for other people, and I didn't charge much because I was self trained. I had a few jobs, but they were never supposed to be much more than information site, and most of them just let it go.

Chris never recovered from the foot injury. He applied for Social Security Disability and 5 years later was finally approved. We used his back check to buy a small trailer.

During our time at Dannielles she got tired of seeing our Car in the Drive and not running so she talked him into selling it. She provided me with a car to take her son to and from school, and when one would break down she would buy another. Finally she bought me a van. We used part of the back pay money to do some engine work that needed to be done, and to fix a few things that needed fixing. It cost us right around $600. After we moved out I tried to work as long as I could, but Chris had gotten where it was hard for him to do much of anything. It also got really hard for me to climb stairs and do a lot of heavy lifting. I realized I was getting older.

After Chris got medicare, he started seeing Doctors and got his diabetes more regulated and his health was really good. The only issue was the pain in his foot. We got him in to see one of the best neurologists in the state and he began to improve with a medication that was designed to help opiod addicts get off morphine or methadone. The counter indication was pain relief. He started on shots that I would give him. I kept track of how often he had it, I didn't want him to get addicted to it, even though it was not supposed to be addictive. He started feeling like a pin cushion, so he went to a sub-lingual (under the tongue) and when I wasn't around he would always find where I had hidden them. He swears the Cat told him where they were.

He had an injury to his back that he didn't know he had because of the medication. It was completely healed before he realized it. The neurologists had closed his practice here, and moved away. The pain management clinic wanted to do a new patient interview over the phone and I told them that was not legal. When they found about about the medication he was on, they said they could not prescribe it, so they refused to see him. He quit taking it, and that is when he realized he had a back injury.

We started seeing a podiatrist because he needed his toe nails cut, and I didn't feel comfortable doing it, with him being a diabetic. The first time he had his nails clipped the girl had nicked the tip of the toe. A day later the two middle toes on his right foot were purple. We went to the emergency room and they transferred him to a hospital in Port St, Lucie. Doctor put a stint in and he was fine.

He was not real comfortable going back to the podiatrist, but he did anyway. It was about a year later that he had gone in and they did the nails, and reduced calluses He was in the shower a couple of days later and the callus that he had on the foot that he had crushed lifted completely off. He had a big hole in the side of his foot

At first there was no bleeding, but it didn't close up. Then it started getting really angry looking, red, and fevered. It started seeping a puss that I didn't like. The podiatrist was really confused what to do, it just wasn't like anything he had ever seen. A year later the Doctor said he needed to surgically debris it. When the pathology came back they listed the bacteria in it, which could be treated, and the 'dead bone'. No explanation about the dead bone, just that it was dead bone.

Don't remember exactly when he went to the second vascular surgeon, but he went to Stuart and had a stint put in his left leg. He did all kinds of test that needed to be repeated every 6 months to measure his progress. The blood flow in the left leg was really poor and we knew he would need more stints. It was a year and a half since the callus came off, and the foot was not getting any better. The podiatrist had done all he knew to do, but thought maybe another stint would get blood flow to the foot to help with healing. We went back to Stuart, and the first Doctor had gone on to another job so we had a different Doctor. He put another stint in and we went home.

That was on a Friday, Monday his foot was black. The whole foot was black. The podiatrist had gone on vacation. His regular Doctor had gone on vacation, so I took him to Traditions Hospital in St Lucie county and found out that the Doctor who had done the stint on Friday had gone on vacation. So we waited for them to find the vascular surgeon on call.

Chris was running a high fever, he wasn't doing well at all. They had him on IV's and were giving him something to bring his fever down. He said his foot felt like it was on fire. (worse than normal) he told me he just wanted it gone. They sent for the tech to do the Doppler to give them idea where he was with the blood flow. Then the Doctor came in and looked at his foot and turned to me an said well I think we can...I held up my had and said 'STOP! We have been fighting this for nearly two years, there is dead bone, it won't heal, he wants it gone. He will tell you that if you want to save it, get a box to put it in it after you cut it off, he just does not want it attached to him any longer.' The doctor kinda looked at me, and I think he said that's kind of harsh. And I told him that is what HE would tell him.

The doc looked at the doplar, looked at his records on the computer then looked at his foot, and then he looked at me, and said, 'I agree!' and scheduled the surgery for Wednesday. Chris stayed in the Emergency room from around 4pm on Monday to around 9am on Wednesday when he lost his leg below the knee.

A year and a half later he lost his right leg below the knee, two days after having a stint put in, and then 10 months later he lost the right knee. This is just to explain the trials we have been through and why I am where I am today.

Many people have told me over the years that their spouses or mates, have left them when they got sick or injured. I have alway said, I love him, and My marriage voes say Til Death do us Part!