I have been thinking of doing this for some time so please bear with me for writing so much at once! I am playing catch up! I would not have had the time had I tried before. Please forgive my many mistakes and grammar errors. Now to continue as the late great Paul Harvey would say..the rest of the story!
We went onto Alabama almost to the Mississippi line that night. We stopped to eat and I knocked over a huge glass of tea in my lap... just the way that day went! Compared to the other events this was nothing!! We tried to put what the doctor had told us out of our minds. We had business to take care of!
We got there just as they were cleaning up all the mess from the load but the truck was long since towed away. On inspection the next morning we discovered Shannon and Keith were very right...it was totaled! The man who owned the wrecker company gave us 150 cash for our almost full tanks of fuel..since the insurance company would not include the fuel in the price of the salvage. That would help with the expenses of the trip. We recovered some tools and stuff and headed back towards home with the intention of shopping for another truck on the way back. The wrecked truck was a great truck..nothing fancy but got great fuel mileage. It was a good truck in a mechanical way also. We had bought it just a few months earlier from "Domino" one of Ronnie's trucking friends who had also decided to retire! It would be no easy task to find one we could afford that would be as sound mechanically. The profit margin is so slim in this business,making it essential to take every thing into consideration! Besides even if we could finance a more expensive truck they don't make anymore money than the ones that cost much less!! I am thankful my husband sees it this way too cause I know just once he would love to own a Peterbuilt!
When we began shopping he ask at one point did I think we should just "get out of it"... but with me being the money manager , I knew we did not have enough coming in ...little as it may be after expenses..we needed it!We are paying Cobra insurance and with his diabetes and other issues we had to keep it though it is like a car payment! This is a new reality in America! We prayed that night in the motel that God would lead us ..if we bought another truck it would have to be solid and CHEAP!! Most of the trucks in the ads were well above what we owed on the one wrecked and out of our budget!
He had saw one in a truck paper earlier that sounded too cheap to believe it could be much good. We headed on over to Birmingham to check it out. He called the salesman and could not get him so we decided to go on home. Ronnie said it might just be a come on anyway! Ronnie had saw some in other places and decided he wanted to look around some anyway. Thirty miles or so out of Birmingham the salesman called back and insisted we turn around and come back! We talked it over briefly and decided to turn around. After all we HAD prayed about it! We did buy the 2000 model Freightliner that same week! So far it has proved to be a good old truck though it does not get the fuel mileage the International got! It was cheap and it seems to be solid! Had we not made the decision to turn around and had we not bought it that same week, with Ronnie's illness I am convinced we would not have a truck now!! We had no idea at that time what we would be facing!
Ronnie managed to drive the truck home with me following. He had a tough time just getting home. When we stopped for a burger he had a lot of trouble and pain. That was the last time he has drove a big truck. A few days later he could not walk with his leg. I had to look up his walker he used with his knee replacement. He had been complaining with his hand hurting and pain between his shoulder blades long before he quit driving but we thought it was from driving the long hours.He wanted to get the truck cleaned up and have the paint buffed but he was not up to doing anything at this point...He was out of steam.
The doctor in Macon had suggested he get a colonoscopy.He had one the next week and thankfully it turned out negative for cancer..so for a brief time we felt better! He also sent us for a test to rule out a disease I had never heard of..Multiple Myeloma.. after another test for that and another wait, I found a message on my cell phone that congratulated us...he tested negative for this too!! It was looking like with Thanksgiving coming up we were going to have even more to be thankful for! If we just KNEW what we were dealing with!
He fell one day in a local parking lot after we got back home from getting the truck. He had intense back pain and we wondered if he had injured his back in some way. He went to the doctor and got a script for muscle relaxers and anti inflam meds.. We went to help with the festival of lights at our church. We worked a long day and it came as no surprise neither of us could hardly get out of bed the next day. I got better but he continued to get worse. He was determined to do something useful now that he was "retired" and went back alone to work on the lights that next Tuesday. He came home in so much pain! He struggled to stay on his feet and every time he tried to move during the night he moaned in pain. He is not a complainer and I just KNEW something was not right! This was the tough guy who went to El Paso at 6 weeks after a total knee replacement! He went back to driving 6 weeks after a back fusion years earlier.. he had a pacemaker/defib put in and was back at it in two short weeks.
I tried to get him in to see the back doctors in Savannah. He also had chest pain so he had already visited his heart doctor who declared he had pluresy. Meds for that seemed to help but then the pain was moving around. He went back to his internist, he went to the urgent care center...he has enough doctor appointments to keep with diabetes and having his pacemaker checked out.. so I knew he was hurting to continue to spend his time going! He had no energy and looked so pale. He tried to help me put up our usual light display at home... but quit after a hour or so...My heart just ached for him. It is a feeling of such helplessness to see someone you love so much and you KNOW something is very wrong but can not find out what is causing it!
On the day before Thanksgiving I took him to the urologist . He had a history of kidney stones and he thought maybe one might be trying to come down. After the doctor told him it was not his kidneys we were baffled and he was frustrated beyond words. He sort of vented on the doc about how he had went to this doctor and that doctor and could not find out what was going on with him. The doctor had no compassion and was very rude at this point. Instead of seeing him as a man who was in a lot of pain , he took it personal! His PA was very different however. I saw her a while back in a restaurant and she remembered us and ask did we ever get a diagnosis. I confirmed that we did and she expressed to me how she knew he was in pain and how bad she felt for us that day! I was crying that day and she almost got me back to that point in the fast food place that day! She was so kind and caring...maybe the doc was having a bad day ? It struck me how he had mission pictures all over the walls from another country and he could not empathize and see my husband was in so much pain! I won't judge him but the old saying goes that charity begins at home and I am not talking free!!! I know the man probably does a good work on his mission trip. We called his internists who was out for the holiday and the doctor on call was not taking on anymore patients! I guess the one good thing he did do is tell us to go to ER...
We left his office and went to ER at Fairview. They were super nice to us and have always been great! The doctor there very kindly also told Ronnie he did not know what to do with him. Usually people begin with me and then go to their doctors, he told us. What he DID do was run lots of tests...which led to his diagnosis that came in January! The orthopedic doctor in Macon was not too far from the mark though he did not have all the tests. All he had was the CT scan to go by but he was on the right path. He even had him checked for MM (Multiple Myeloma) but being an orthopedic doctor he omitted some detail that had to be checked so that is why the test was negative.
We spent nine hours at ER and it was beginning to look like there would be no turkey dinner the next day at my house anyway! Shifts changed and then comes in the next doctor on shift. She too did not know what was wrong but she stated , something is wrong, he has a lot going on , I just don't know at this point what it is! She did give us ALL the tests results to take back to his internists. She told him she would admit him for pain relief but he opted to go home. Maybe by next Monday we can have an answer!!!
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