Friday, May 27, 2011

How it all began...the first few weeks

Through out my late teens and early 20's, I had always liked to have fun. For me, this meant going to bars and staying out late with friends. Alcohol filled a void and gave me a new feeling of being carefree.. a feeling that I thoroughly enjoyed and never wanted to let go of. I guess you could say that since I had to always be the adult as a child... that once I grew up and actually became an adult, I felt I was justified in wanting to act like a child. I only recognize this behavior now as childish.... However, while I was in the throws of it, it seemed to me as only a meer way of letting loose and letting go.... a pleasant escape from reality... and if you couldn't understand, then I was sorry... it wasn't my problem, it was yours.

We had no children..... no responsibilities... As long as I made it to class... I didn't see the problem. Never mind the fact that I would wake up with my head spinning and making every effort I could not to throw up in the car...

......The beautiful and glorious days of being hungover.... it was sickening

 I look back now and don't understand what appealed so much to me about that. It was a time of reckless abandon, I thank God that I never hurt myself or anyone during those days. Selfish behavior was running riot in my life and all I cared about was myself and how a situation affected me.

These days are nauseating... I could very easily become disgusted with myself.

The years passed by and slowly alcohol lost it's appeal to me, I found that I didn't care to drink. However, another drug had taken over my life.. a drug that was introduced by these new friends I mentioned earlier. I lost 30 pounds and felt that I had never looked better in my life. It is a shame that even though the outward appearances had improved, my insides were slowly being torn apart.. The idea that I could suffer a heart attack or a stroke, never crossed my mind. Or if it did, I was too wrapped up in it to care..

That is the way addiction works.... it becomes so powerful and so consuming, that even with knowledge of possible harm, your body screams to just do it one more time... just once.....but as I have learned, one is too  many and 1,000 will never be enough..

...  This escapade lasted only a few months and eventually stopped as well. These experiences only strengthening the idea in my head that people who had problems with drug addiction or alcohol were full of it.. It was simply a matter of will-power and telling yourself no. Easy as that......

I was setting myself up for a huge slap in the face and a wake up call delivered straight from the hands of God.

Addictions, no matter the source, resemble the life of a passenger on the Titanic. You can switch from room to room... The room of alcohol may lose its appeal, so then you go to the room of Cocaine... and when that is no longer fun, you switch to the room of co-dependency... looking for others to validate you.

However many times you decide to change rooms.... one fact remains true....

The ship is still going down.......

I wish I had known then that this is what was going on in my life... Yet, at the time, I never even believed for a second that I had any sort of addiction problem.. I honestly and truly just didn't consider the idea.

"See how easily you can stop", I would tell myself... "This isnt addiction, this is just recreation... youre young, youre having fun, what is the harm? If you need to stop, you will. See.... you stopped drinking all the time.. and you put your nasty cocaine habit away..."

Even though I realize now that all of the signs were there... when you are absorbed in the moment, sometimes the hardest thing to see is the thing that is right in front of your face. Call me naive, but I just did not see it..

Fast forward a couple of years later and here I am... pregnant with my first son. The idea of taking a drink or any drug for that matter had long left my mind... I had moved on and I was growing up. My responsibilities were now directed towards my husband and our growing family.. and I can say that I was going through one of the happiest times in my life.

August 23rd arrived... and at 4:17 in the morning, Parker Bennett Roberson was born. Arriving 5 weeks early, he was the most perfect and beautiful thing I had ever been a part of. I felt like I had just accomplished one of the greatest moments I would ever experience.

Even though I was dissapointed by the fact that I had to have a c-section, none of that mattered anymore when I held that precious little boy in my arms. The world stood still and for a second, I was completely and utterly blown away.  The day couldnt have been any better. We were surrounded by our family and friends.. with smiling faces from every corner. I wasn't affected by the pain, they had me connected to a PCA pump that delivered morphine through an IV anytime I hit the button. Even though I was uncomfortable, the joy of my new son and the euphoria I felt from holding him, easily drowned out any signal from my body that I had just undergone major abdominal surgery. I am proud to say that I would have to be reminded by the nurse to push that button...

6:30 pm...... I am laying in my hospital bed... Josh leaves the room after a phone call and doesn't mention where he is going.... he just gets up and steps out...

8:30pm... I am still alone... I have no one in the room, my baby is in the nursery... and I am absolutely alone... By this time I am sick to my stomach with worry. I have called josh 100 times and he doesnt answer my calls... I call every family member I can think of.......nothing.................. It is at this time, I begin to cry. I am alone, in the dark, and I can not find anyone.  I call out to the nurse and ask her to please bring me my son... I was grasping for any feeling of comfort I could find... and that comfort, I believed, could be found in Bennett. I wanted to hold him and feel his sweet warm breath against my cheek. Even though I wanted to hold him... in reality, he would have been holding me.

The nurse tells me that the doctors are with him and that he can't come to my room at the time. I immediatly feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. As a mother, my mind begins to race... I suddenly feel that there is something very wrong... I start to wonder if my baby is dead, if that is why no one will bring him... if that is why no one will answer my calls...... I am crawling in my skin.... I want to run out of the door screaming and begging for someone to please tell me what is going on...

But I can't....I am confined to a hospital bed.... my stomach has been cut open... and I can't move. I am stuck and I am in one of the worst physical predicaments of my life. Completely and totally helpless.

It is at this moment that I see something that to this day, still runs through my mind.  I see josh... I see steve.. I see my grandmother... and I see a group of our closest friends.. followed by 2 of my doctors... and somewhere in the middle, I see my mother. She is shaking.. unable to walk... and covered in blood..

Josh comes to me and carries out one of the hardest actions I believe anyone in this life would ever have to do. He grabs my hand... and through a trembling voice, I hear him say the words I will never forget.

... Deann... I'm so sorry..... Tommy has been in an accident...

I ask him if my daddy is okay... hoping and praying that somewhere in all of this, God has found a way to grant us mercey... Surely.... the God I believed in wouldnt do this to me. He wouldnt give me the happiest day of my life just to rip it away in one of the most cruel and hurtful ways imaginable..

But the answer I am looking for is not there... and all I hear is... "he's dead"..

A deep and painful knot develops in my throat.... and I feel sick to my stomach...I start to shake and the tears fall from my eyes.... flooding down my cheek...

I can't stop crying... all I want to do is close my eyes and go back to the way it was just a few hours before.. Where I can sit in my room, and look in the corner at Tommy... beaming from ear to hear as he holds his precious grandson and sings to him a song that his daddy used to sing to him...

I feel deep sobs building in my chest..... but I can't let them go.... It was at that moment that I learned that in order to sob.. your stomach muscles have to be intact... and frankly, mine are not..  Instead, they are hanging on together by a few stitches... With each wail that tries to escape from my mouth... a horrible and burning pain shoots from my stomach up into my chest.... and at that very moment, it hits me.... I cant even cry like I need to... and there again, I feel completely and totally helpless.

My hands reach for the button.... I need something to ease the physical pain I am in....  a few minutes later I realize that I don't hurt so much... not just physically, but emotionally as well... and for just a moment, this situation seems managable.

Days go by and the funeral has arrived.... From the moment I left the hospital, I have been on my feet. Well wishers come to our house to see the new baby.... and then to offer condolances at the same time..Their eyes give it all away....

I havent rested.... I can't sit still... if I do, I start to think too much... and then I feel as if I am going to lose my mind... So I keep myself up and busy... By this time, it is a week later and I have gone through a prescription of Percocet... I had reached a point where my incision was starting to swell even more, and I was anemic from losing blood... my blood pressure was elevated and it was obvious I was in pain due to the fact that I hadn't taken a single minute to allow my body to try to heal.. So I took my medicine every 4 hours, as directed, and I soldiered on.. I kept a strong front for my mother and my family.. I had to hold myself together for my son.

I call my doctor and ask them about refilling my medication. I have to be at the funeral in a few hours and I will be on my feet all day.. The doctor agrees and mentions that he will make sure that I have enough to get me through the next few weeks since the situation at hand has called for a greater physical demand than most.

At this time, I am still not psychologically or physically addicted.. and, had I been able to stop then, I probably never would have become that way.... Yet, a few weeks later, I am in the hospital again... having another surgery related to complications from the c-section... and so it begins..

6 weeks of continued use, moving from one surgery to the next.. with one complication followed by another..

My body has now become accustomed to the chemical componets of this medication.. I am directed by the physician to take 2 tablets instead of 1 to limit the pain from the most recent surgery. He tells me that it is normal for the body to need an increased dosage after being exposed for a period of time. I just wish he had told me then, what so many tell me now... all it takes is 2 weeks..... just 2 weeks.. and your body can become dependent.

and unknowingly, that is exactly what was starting to happen to me...

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