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The Week From Hell

I wish I could write this with a better perspective than I have right now--like, I might look back on this week someday and think that it wasn't THAT bad--but in the moment, I do believe this is the biggest trial of my life.  Even looking back on the years of abuse and manipulation I suffered as a child, those seemed easier than this, but maybe it's just perspective that allows me to balance the scales that way.

This week, we moved everything out of our 5,500 square foot house into two storage units and the barn of a friend, and moved into a 2-bedroom, second floor apartment.  I will say how thankful I am that we sold our house.  I can't even imagine (like, I really can't imagine) the stress I would be feeling at the moment if we were having no house showings and our house wasn't selling.  I've been there recently, but we had what we thought was a stable job so it seemed doable.  We liquidated a bunch of our stuff this week.  Beth, John's sister, hosted a garage sale for anything and everything we brought to her. She made $340 which we were going to split, but we just gave it to her.  Yep, $340 for a garage full of our memories and things.  John sold his tractor, and our riding lawn mower, and the tiller, and the elliptical, and probably some other things that he didn't even tell me about (not at the garage sale).

I don't usually like it when women (or people) call other people "angels", but I kid you not, having Ethan and Rebecca here to help along with the two missionaries serving in our ward?  They were literal angels.  John had already moved four truckloads of boxes to the storage unit by himself (I've already posted about that), but we had a lot of furniture to move.  It took us almost eight hours to get everything moved, and even then, we still had enough furniture to fill our 2-bedroom apartment.  Through all of that, I never heard a word of complaint from anyone.  I never saw anyone sit down, or take a break.  It was exhausting work.  In the end, John said he couldn't have done it without all of them, but Ethan especially, who figured out how to fit our entire lives in two storage units.

It was with quite a bit of sadness that I saw Roxy and Hootie leave for Maryland with Ethan and Rebecca.  Hootie especially.  It stinks, splitting up the animal friends.

I thought it would be a breeze to then move in the rest of our stuff into our apartment over the next week (we closed on our house on Friday), but Monday night I started feeling really weird.  I had serious tightness in my chest, and by Tuesday, I was full-on coughing and unable to breathe (and I peed my pants three times from the coughing).  I worked through the day, and I even helped John collate his eight, 5" binders of exhibits for his court case (those binders alone cost us $1,000) but that night I didn't want to keep John up, seeing as his hearing was the next day, so I slept in the family room, on the floor, because all of our mattresses and couches were moved already.  It was a miserable night, waking up every ten minutes to cough my guts out.

Wednesday, I went to my allergist and he told me there was nothing to do but ride out the flu-like symptoms.  He told me that if I wanted to, I could go get a chest x-ray at Chelsea Hospital....the hospital that is taking John down.  No thank you.

That night was John's hearing.  I spent at least an hour just wandering around the house.  I was too sick to be able to do anything, but I didn't feel like I should just sit down and watch a movie while he was going through the worst moment of his life.  By this point, I couldn't even stand up for longer than a minute or two.

John came home and couldn't even tell me how terrible it was.  Six straight hours of people saying how much they hated him.  And it was six hours more the next evening.  Louis, John's lawyer, already sees things the hospital did illegally, but if we want to pursue that, it will be in federal court and could take years.

All I could do was pray that I could get better quickly so that I could move the rest of our stuff.  I even got a blessing, but nothing helped.

So Friday morning rolled around, and we knew that the hearing would extend to this next week.  Yes, the prosecution had THAT MANY WITNESSES against John.  Almost nine hours worth.  The closing was at 4 p.m., and I was in tears in the kitchen, knowing that I had to pack the rest of the house but I was unable to stand for longer than a couple of minutes at a time.  And I was burning up with fever.  My clothes were soaking wet, and I wasn't seeing straight.

I would pack up something in the car and drive over to the apartment only to lay on the floor of the apartment for 30 minutes, trying to recover.  Meanwhile, John still had stuff to take to the storage units, so thankfully he called the elders again.

We have had some elders throughout our lives who have become family.  Elder Grimm and Elder Fingleton are perfect examples along with Sisters Larson and Burnett.  Elder Thomas, one of our Chelsea elders, will be another.  Not only is he a stellar missionary, but he has been invaluable to us through all of this.  He keeps us positive when we're feeling down, he never makes an excuse to not help us, and he checks in on us.  If we hadn't had him (and Elder Plumb) during this time, we wouldn't have been able to do what we did.

Once again, they dropped everything and came over to help.  And they worked.  I really don't know how I will ever repay them.

I managed to get a shower before the 4 p.m. signing, and I stayed upright throughout it.  The buyers didn't actually show up, so it was a painless process.  I had wanted to express to them how thankful I am that they bought our house, but oh well.

That night, John took me to the ER.  Everyone could see how terribly sick I was.  I was running a fever of 101.6 which is kind of unbelievable because I never run a fever.  However, the chest x-ray was normal, and the flu screening was clear.  They sent me home with nothing but hope that things would get better.

So, in one positive spin, I kind of love our apartment.  It's nicer than any 2-bedroom apartment we had as 20-somethings.  Plus, it's really peaceful.  Unfortunately though, it's not really built for three dogs and two cats.  We have already cleaned up three diarrhea "rings of fire" left by Dash, and we've found two piles of cat poop in laundry baskets of clean clothes.  And Dash is now off his food, and unable to climb the stairs because of his back legs shaking.  Of course, I can't do anything but sit on the couch, so John has had to clean up everything.  I had this vision that when we moved in, I would take the dogs for walks like clock-work, but everything has been left up to John.  He's been doing the laundry (from the poop clothes) and mopping the poop floors.  Even when he put Dash out on our patio, Dash went diarrhea out there, and it seeped between the slats onto the patio below into the neighbor's flowers, so he had to go down and clean that out as well.

Add to this, the air conditioner in our apartment doesn't work, and they can't fix it until Monday.  It's not a big deal to me, but there are few things John hates more than sleeping in a hot apartment.

Our lives have literally been nightmares.

So today I kind of lost it.  I had a terrible sleep last night because of the coughing.  John had gotten home from church (thank goodness I found substitutes for teaching YW and playing organ (Elder Thomas), and Ryan Barney had called him, asking how things were.  I had been sitting on the couch, and I had to hear a play-by-play once again of how sucky our lives are, and how hopeless they are for the future.  I couldn't take it anymore.  As strong as I've been for us and specifically for John these past six months, I couldn't be strong anymore.  I'm ready to take our animals to the vet to have them put down, I'm ready to sell everything I own, and I'm ready to kill myself.  No joke, I think about death and what a relief it would be, and it's not difficult to picture.

Plus, one thing I will say.  I have had almost no support through this whole thing, but I've needed to be the supportive one.  I talk to Glo and she cries with me, and Ethan checks in with me almost everyday, and Ethan and Rebecca came and helped; and Elder Thomas has been a huge help, as has Nancy Carlson who also checks in on me daily (and doesn't sleep at night because she's so worried about us) but other than that, I'm kind of on my own with my thoughts and feelings.  I'm glad that John has a therapist, and I'm glad that so many people have reached out to him, offering to pray for him and fast for him and call him again--he deserves it 100%--but it's hard being the side spouse whom nobody thinks of.  I attribute the strength I've had to to the Lord, but what a difference it would have been to have, say, a mother to help me through this.  I can't even imagine.

So here we sit on a Sunday afternoon in our non-airconditioned apartment on diarrhea watch with Dash, me writing this depressing story of our current life, and John on his work laptop, preparing his statement for this Wednesday.  I'm supposed to go to PA to get my hair colored on Tuesday, but I don't even know if I'll be able to drive myself, nor do I know if I can leave the dogs alone while John is at the lawyer's office.  And for the six weeks following the hearing this Wednesday, a transcript will be typed up of the proceedings, each lawyer will prepare a 20-page brief with their arguments, and the committee will decide.  The same kind of committee that ousted John in the first place.

I can't see a future in all of this.  John has received multiple blessings where he has been told it's all going to be okay, but the facts of it all don't make sense for that.  Just for a day, today, I have lost hope and don't want to go on.

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