My symptoms started about 15 months ago. At that point, my wife and I had been together for about 8 years, married about 5. I have not been officially diagnosed but my most recent GI (my 3rd) is leaning towards "mild Crohn's". Mild is a relative term, but I do know whatever I have is not nearly as severe as what many of you have suffered with. At least so far. For me, the disease came after feeling lousy every day for 30 years from FMS, so it likely hit me mentally much harder than it might have had I been well all my life up to this point. The prospect of having to deal with "yet another" condition was (is) fairly depressing to me, and no doubt this made me a bit less than pleasant to be around at times (depressed, angry), though I always went out of my way to make it clear to my wife that I appreciated her support & was never upset with her or US. Justice mentions his wife finding him crying in the shower; when it began to be clear my sadness over this latest condition was having an adverse effect on my wife, I took to going out in the garage to cry, something which I eventually revealed to her. If she had told me she was driven to such a thing because of suffering which she had no control over, and because of my callous response to it, I would have been absolutely crushed and ashamed of myself. She did not respond at all. Long story short, about 6 months ago, we BOTH sat in the office of my 2nd GI & heard him say "I'm not sure what it is at this point, but it could be Crohn's disease or a tumor". 4 days after that, I got a call from my wife from the airport, where I THOUGHT she had gone for a business trip, telling me she was leaving me. That was it. No warning. No discussion. No options. Just RUN. In the ensuing 6 months, I've talked to her about 5 minutes on the phone & we have exchanged a handful of emails, mostly about the particulars of the divorce. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that this woman, who works for a non-profit organization which lobbies for disadvantaged children, could have been capable of such cold indifference to someone who had been nothing but kind to her and whose only crime was falling victim to a disease. To make matters worse, my health insurance is through her job, and it is now in jeopardy (in fact, the new insurer, Cigna, is threatening to cut me off already as a "pre-existing condition". All you Aussies, Canadians, Brits and others with similar universal health care schemes, no doubt your systems aren't perfect, but consider yourselves LUCKY!)
So to someone like Robyn who's just starting out, I wish you all the luck in the world, and I don't want to seem to be talking down to you, but there's a reason people tend to get more cynical with age, and it's not because the "milk of human kindness" flows in torrents. Some are luckier than others, there ARE selfless, decent people out there. But in my experience anyway, they are the rare exception, rather than the rule.
and i love you alwyas and forever to the very very end of time.
