Behind every man...

Is a good women. I truly believe that and my wife is a great example. My story with Spondy and Arachnoiditis goes far deeper then the physical aspects. The last 2 years were tough years there is no doubt about that.

It all started in December 2002 when our son was born. She took maternity leave and our son was born a few days before Christmas. Since she is a petite woman (barely 5 feet) she was having trouble giving birth so we had to have an emergency c-section. It kept her off her feet a bit longer then she was expecting but the big bombshell was when she found out that she was downsized the week after returning from maternity leave. That was the same week we found that I needed to have the surgery for the spondylolisthesis.

She was now without a job and I was facing a surgery that would take me out of the work force for what we thought would be about 6 months. Since I was working for a small company I did not have any disability insurance, would not be covered by any kind of unemployment and we re still fighting the workers comp issue. We also found that I would need someone to care for me while I was getting better for at least the first several weeks. I could not walk up and down stairs or hold the baby and in fact my wife got my dad to come help her move a bed from upstairs to downstairs for me.

Anyway, she would now for at least another month or so have to take care of a newborn and my broken ass. I am sure that was a total blast for her, but I never heard her complain once. Good thing is that newborns tend to sleep a lot and I was so doped up for the pain that I was out most of the time as well.

Once I was able to move around a bit more she went to looking for a job. It was a tough hunt for her and she ended up having to take a position that paid a lot less then she had been making but the tradeoff was that she was working for a doctor who had his office less then 100 meters from our back door. The commute made it a decent midway position.

She finally decided to go back to work for the employer we both worked for when we met. While she started back in her old position it was not long before she was promoted to manager. It is a good company and they are worldwide which is nice. Even better is their worldwide HQ is less then 30 minutes from here so there is a lot of potential to move up.

Anyway, she has been great through the whole ordeal. Where we used to be a 2 income family living comfortably, we went to a 1 income family making less then half of what we used to. We had to get rid of our rental property and second car as well as make other sacrifices. We have pulled through fairly and things are getting better.

One nice thing has been that we were both home together for about 6 months with our newborn and we were able to spend a lot more time with or other son too. Since I am now home all the time I am enjoying being more a part of the boys everyday doings rather then the "traditional" dad most people have.