fatherhood

Always and Forever: Our experience with marriage and Duchenne

~ Betty Vertin ~ 2 Comments

We were 19 when we met, 21 and 22 when we married. We were young and goofy. We habitually said “Always and Forever” sometimes instead of “I love you.”

I was a hot mess when I met Jason, but thankfully, God took things over, and a little divine intervention led me right down the aisle, and I married my best friend.

We will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary in June. We’ve had more good years than bad, but I could argue that the bad ones are the ones that have shaped us into the couple we are today. Our most challenging years were the year following diagnosis, the year my sister and his dad died, and the year before our son Rowen stopped walking).

The boys were first diagnosed 10 years ago. At diagnosis, we were told how hard it would be on our marriage. It was an accurate statement. We’ve been through many ups and downs and will surely be through lots more. Sustaining a marriage through a rare disease has been like a dance. We move around or with each other, depending on the stage. Sometimes we’ve danced alone and didn’t want to be on the same dance floor.

The diagnosis broke me. I was filled with grief and pain and fog for the earlier months and first year. Our marriage suffered because I was so full of sadness and hurt that there was little room left for him. I suffered because I wanted him to be hurting as much as I was, I didn’t want to be alone in my pain, but I wanted his pain to look just like mine.

The first lesson I had to learn was that men and women react differently to grief and heartache. He felt broken, too. The little boys that numbered nearly enough to field a basketball team would never play, and that realization was minor when compared to the fact that he, like me, was scared they wouldn’t live long enough to experience a rich and blessed life.

He was hurting, too; it just looked different for him. I was not kind or filled with grace when I didn’t understand his feelings, and he stayed, and he kept us going when all I could do was actively mourn the life I thought we would have and inactively live the life we had right in front of us. He later told me that watching me hurt so badly killed him because he couldn’t fix it.

I came out of that mourning period convinced I would save our boys. I became a super mom. I did everything. I found the best doctors, I found a clinical trial, I started the stretches, I started advocating, I started raising awareness, I, I, I… I did everything I could possibly think of to save my boys. But, you know what? I left him out. I alienated him. It wasn’t good for us because I was taking out the “us.” I needed to know I did everything, afraid I wouldn’t be able to live with myself in the end if I didn’t. I didn’t leave much for him to do, and then I would get mad that he wasn’t doing what I was doing. Slowly, we found our way, but it wasn’t without growing pains.

Then another life hit; non-duchenne life. We both lost people close to us, and we learned that there is more than one kind of grief, and to balance both, we had to lean on each other. It wasn’t as easy as it reads. He was angry that his dad was gone, and I was shell-shocked that my sister was gone. Love and faith made it possible to learn to care for each other and our family when the other needed time to grieve.

During all of this, we were also fighting the FDA for approval of a drug therapy we believed was helping sustain our children’s health. While trying to come to terms with our losses and fight the biggest fight, we had People magazine, Newsweek, and every local media outlet interviewing us and recording our reactions as we tried to make our way. We never really had a minute to stop. We felt like we had to do it, to use our story to try to save our boys. It really does feel like life or death sometimes in rare diseases, and rather than let our boys down, we let parts of ourselves go. But I remember his self-sacrifice, and he was mine. I loved him more because of it.

We did well for years. We watched our children grow and learn and change, and we cheered our oldest through high school and into college.

Then, parts of Duchenne that we were not prepared for hit us like an anvil. Our oldest son started suffering from anxiety. He was afraid to sleep, and Jason and I did not sleep much for nearly a year. I was with our son because it was the only thing to help him sleep, and he was on the couch. My husband and I were never together, not even for sleep. It wasn’t healthy for us. We drifted.

This was also when our middle son was approaching the day he would no longer walk. I grieved that hard. I was mad, and it was easy to stay mad because I forgot the first lesson I learned and wanted Jason’s hurting to look like my hurting. We responded in different ways. We spoke only to talk about what we needed to do to get our kids through the day (what’s for supper, who needs to be here, what still needs to be done, etc.). There were lots of tears and arguments during those months.

Then, the day came when our son did stop walking. It was sudden, a broken leg, and overnight, we had to figure out how to bathe and shower him, dress him, and care for him because he could not do what he had done even the day before. I could not do it alone. I often wonder if my husband had waited almost a decade for me to realize that. And he was THERE, BIG TIME.

He became the one to bath him because he was the one strong enough to lift him. He became the one to dress him and help in the bathroom. The tenderness and compassion I see when he cares for our son is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. A loving, caring father. I fall more in love with him every day by watching him.

It doesn’t get past me that Jason, a loving earthly father who patiently waited for me to let go of the reigns, did just as our heavenly father does when he waits for us.

My husband is so strong, but I wiped tears from his cheek at a breaking point a couple weeks ago. Vulnerability is changing us. That week a couple weeks ago was hard. It was full of sleepless nights, tears, and ungraceful moments. One night, at nearly 2AM, I fell back into bed, where he lay awake. I had been with one of the boys. Jason asked how he was. I answered and said, ” Our life will only get harder.” His response was “Yes.” Exhausted, we fell asleep without another word.

Our life is hard. I read it phrased this way recently, and it is true: we are watching our flesh and blood deteriorate in front of our eyes. It will always be hard.

We try hard to give our boys the best life, full of love, laughter, and memories. We see so many beautiful things. We’ve been on the receiving end of lovely gifts. We have met many other families living relentlessly brutal experiences but relishing in successes and joys. We know people celebrate every day. We have people celebrating our boys with us. (I attended noon Mass today, and it was offered to my son. I had no idea.) We have a home we love and doctors and providers that are amazing. We have a goofy dog. We have love. We are blessed by this hard life. We are blessed to share this life together.

Marriage is not two perfect people. It is two imperfect people loving each other through imperfect situations. We continue to grow and learn how to do this life. We honor the promise we made each other on our wedding day, always and forever.

Fatherhood Was Just an Idea

~ Betty Vertin ~ 2 Comments

My biological father died in prison, I only met him a couple of times. My most vivid memory of him was a visit to the prison when I was young.  It was before I started school, my youngest sister at the time was a baby, so I had to have been 3 years old or younger. He walked into the room I was in with my mother and little sisters and he was wearing shackles.  He had handcuffs around his wrists and around his ankles and a long chain connecting them.  He shuffled.  My mother told me to say hi to my dad.  I did not say a word.  One of them, either my mom or my biological father asked me, “Does the cat have your tongue?”  It was the first time I had heard the expression and remember it scaring me.  I expected a crazed cat to launch at my face and attack my tongue. Not much of a memory.

I know that we visited him maybe once more, but I do not remember it.  I vaguely remember landing  at an airport and my step-grandfather picking us up, but that was earlier, I think maybe after he had been arrested and my pregnant mother and her two young daughters were left to fend for themselves.  My mother went home.

My biological father wrote letters and sent birthday cards.  I rarely responded to the mail the stranger that signed his cards “dad” sent me.  I know that over the years my mother sent him pictures of me and my younger sisters.  After his death, I received a large manila envelope full of pictures I had colored, school photos, photos my mother had sent, even a newspaper clipping of a picture of me at kindergarten round-up that he had kept.

I had a step-dad too.  I visited him in prison with my mom for months, if not years of my life.  My relationship with him was very volatile.  There were times that were good and I loved him and there were times that were very bad and I hated him.  He died when I was 17.  I have another step-dad that I have not made an honest effort of getting to know.

Fatherhood was just an idea for me.  I never experienced having a father.  My idea came from watching television shows.  The dads on Alf, Family Matters, Full House were the dads that gave me ideas of what a dad was supposed to be.  I had friends in elementary school that had dads.  I remember that I was not jealous.  At the age, I’m not sure I knew how different my home life was from that of my peers.

I survived my childhood.  I never dreamed of a being a wife or a mother.  I dreamed of getting out. 

When I realized I was going to be a mother for the first time, I was terrified.  I was convinced I would be the same kind of mother as my own mom.  My relationship with my then boyfriend Jason, and now husband of 15 years was by coincidence, we both went to the same party on the same night.  It was not a relationship I discerned to make sure he was the man God meant for me.

What he was though, was nice.  He was good.  He loved me. And I knew I loved him too. I knew I loved him when he made me smile even when he wasn’t with me.  He very quickly became my best friend.

God was so good to me when he put this man in my life.  He will forever be one of the things I am most thankful for.  His heart had all the love in it for me and a baby and for anything else that came our way.  He was good.  He loved me so much.  Even when I didn’t think I could be the mother my child deserved, he knew he could be a father.  He was so right.

Our children, all 6 of them, adore their father.  And everytime I see him with them, even on the bad days, I love him a little extra.

He was the one that wrote a letter penned from our baby’s point of  view for her first day of daycare.  He is the one that worked 2 jobs when I was pregnant with our 5th child to make sure we could afford our newest addition and all the medical bills that came with a diagnosis we would never have expected.  He is the one that works all day everyday and still coaches our children’s sports teams.  He arranges all his vacation days so that he can be with me at as many doctor appointments as possible.  He is the one that waits until the house is quiet and sleeping before he unloads the boys scooters and charges them every night and then sets an alarm for the middle of the night to unplug the charged scooters and plug-in the other.  And when I’m exhausted and can not stay up a minute longer, he stays up with our busy teenage daughter and listens and talks and guides.

The kids would tell you about some of the legendary Dad stories while laughing uncontrolablly…the time he dropped a fishing knife and it landed on his foot.  The kids and I made camp that first night while he drove himself to an emergency room.  They like to tell the story about Christmas at their Uncle’s house when he needed stiches because he stabbed himself in the leg with a pocket knife while trying to open one of the kid’s Christmas presents.  They also might mention the time he got a technical foul coaching a little girls basketball game.

And as much as I enjoy laughing at those stories, they only tell me what I already know. He is the kind of dad that takes 5 kids, 12 and under tent camping and fishing after a long week at work.  He is the dad that is at every holiday loving and laughing.  And he is passionate about being a dad, whether it is during a basketball game, a doctor’s appointment, or a teaching moment with one of the kids.  He is a wonderful father.  He is beyond any TV dad I ever wished for when I was the kid.

He was out-of-town all of last week.  And although I’ve always known these things to be true, it was a reminder to me how blessed I am to be his wife and to be the mother of his children. Our job is not easy but with him next to me, I know we can weather the next storm and the one after that.