Just some thoughts...

Today is my first day off of five! Yipee! I originally just wanted April 9th, 10th, and 11th off. The 10th is my birthday and I did not want to have to work on it. Just so happens... that my two days off this week... are right smack dab up against the days off I requested! "Go Suzii!.. It's your birthday!... Go Suzii!... It's your birthday!".. hehehehe.

Not only is it going to be my 36th birthday... but it will also be my 18th wedding anniversary! I will officially be married half of my life on April 10th. My loving husband would say... "That's a damn long time to be married to the same woman!" Then he would laugh and duck... because my hand would be flying towards the back of his head!!!

I never imagined 18 years ago that we would have gone through as much "stuff" as we have gone through.

When my cousin went into the Air Force... he was in basic training with Rich. I used to write my cousin because I felt the "gotta keep our fighting forces a touch of home" syndrome. So I kept writing to him. Rich used to never get letters from home. He always asked my cousin for my address. He just wanted to have someone to write to. My cousin did not want to give him my address. I don't know if at first it was because of some kind of protection or if he was just being a butthead. Now that I think about it... it was because he was a butthead.

Anyways... My cousin knew how bad Rich wanted my address. One day My cousin had left his footlocker open... which Rich said was not something he usually did. My cousin was in the shower and Rich knew he had his chance. He got into the footlocker and found the address book. He looked feverishly through the book to find my address before he got caught. Then all of a sudden.. my cousin came out around the corner waving a little white piece of paper and said..."You lookin' for this?" Rich had been caught... with his hands in the footlocker!

See... I knew this guy Rich wanted to write to me. My cousin had written me a letter and asked me if I would want to write to someone. I said sure. So I was getting very anxious to get a letter from this guy.

Time passed and I just figured that he had changed his mind about writing... then... I got the first letter. I was so nervous as I sat in my car and read it. Something in my heart had a feeling that I loved this guy already. I know that sounds very stupid. But I honestly did! I told myself just to let it go... this guy could be a phsyco or something. I wrote him back anyways.

We exchanged letters for about a year and a half. There was a time that I did not recieve letters for about 3 months or so. Come to find out he was in some sort of training and did not have alot of time to write. I worked at a little restaurant after they closed cleaning it up. I was a senior in high school at the time. I had never had any boyfriends before. But Rich and I had gotten close by writing. I was very glad when he started writing me again.

I gave him the phone number to the place I worked. No one else was there when I worked so I figured what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. I never talked for very long at a time though. I think it is different when people meet in letters. They have no pressures of the face to face rejection. Letters allow people to open up more because all that you have are the words that you write to them. Rich and I sent pictures to each other as well.

One night... after about a year and a half... Rich called me at the restaurant. He told me to sit down because he had something that he wanted to ask me. Then... he went silent. I asked him what was wrong... and he said that he was kind of scared. I asked him what from. He said that he didn't want to scare me away. I told him that he could never scare me away. I asked him if it would make it any easier if I already knew what the question was. He said maybe... and more silence. I told him just to ask it. Then he asked me what my answer would be. I said... just ask the question... so he did. He asked me to marry him over the phone... and I said yes. HE WAS SOOOOOO RELIEVED! I told him that wasn't so bad now was it?

My soul felt attached to Rich's. Writing letters for so long... allowed for us to really get to know each other. Women always tell there men... "just talk to me". It is hard for men to open up... that is a fact! But when all you have is letters... so much gets poured onto them. I knew everything about Rich... EVERYTHING. He wrote me about his childhood... we shared happy times and sad ones.

I got a package in the mail one day. My mom brought it to me at lunch at school. It was my engagement ring. Next day express mail! WOW! My mom was so happy. I used to sit and talk to my mom for hours every day... and during this time... the talk of the moment was about life...and Rich. She was so wanting me to be happy. She loved me and wanted the best for me. I read her the letters Rich would send to me. She really liked him.

Rich and I started to plan a time to get married. We wanted to meet so badly. We had never seen each other in person yet. Rich was supposed to have gotten some leave time and he was planning on getting his mom, who lives in Ohio... to Washington, where my mom lived and get married on his time off. There was a bombing in another country however... and everyone got their leave time cancelled. Rich was devastated. He told me he would send me a plane ticket... if I wanted to go and see him... and maybe get married in Grand Forks, North Dakota where he was stationed.

Boy did I really have to talk to my mom about this one. It was March 16th 1987... I made arrangements to finish certain projects for my classes... and send them in via the mail... to get my final grades for graduation. My mom wrote me a note that said... "If Suzii cannot wait until her 18th birthday to get married to Rich Bunting... she has my permission to do so." hehehehehehe... my mom was always so good at the permission slip writing! Always thinking... hehehe.

My mom and I took my last paycheck from work... and we went and bought me a brand new suitcase and clothes to put in it. I got the ONE WAY plane ticket in the mail... and soon I would be off. I left my home... with $50.00 in my pocket... a one way plane ticket to Grand Forks... to meet a man I was supposed to marry that I had never met before in my life!!! Boy... did God have his hands full watching over me or what?

When I got to Denver... my plane was having engine troubles. So they put me on a plane to Fargo, North Dakota. Now I was for surely going to be lost. Rich was going to be in Grand Forks... and I was going to be in Fargo. Now what? Well... as it turns out... he made it to Fargo. He had bought me six white roses... and by the time I arrived (finally) they were all wilted and dead looking... but I loved them anyways. I was so nervous walking off the plane. I looked everywhere for Rich. I was so afraid... the "what if's" set in.

What if Rich saw me and left? What if he wasn't there at all? What if it didn't work out? What if I didn't like him? I was so scared I was shaking. I got off the plane and looked everywhere. I saw him standing in the back of the crowd. He handed me the flowers and we exchanged hellos. All I said to him was "Get me out of here." We never talked all the way through the airport. It was a very awkward moment. He had brought two of the most obnoxious friends he could find... they helped him find the airport. We all ended up going to Red Lobster for dinner. I felt so uncomfortable the whole time. Those people he brought were so rude and stupid... I did not say much of anything during dinner. Rich was trying to lighten the atmosphere... and he started telling jokes and picking his teeth with the crab claws. I was just sitting there beside him wanting to DIE! I was so tired and nervous and just a big bundle of nausea. I knew I loved this guy... but I was a nervous wreck. AND THOSE STUPID PEOPLE HE BROUGHT!!! OH MY GOODNESS!!! To this day he wished he would have never brought them!

When the episode of dinner was over, I had eaten maybe 1/4 of this huge chef salad, and we got into SEPARATE cars... thank God! Finally rid of those horrid people.... and it was just the two of us. We finally had a chance to talk just to each other. I loved the ride back to Grand Forks. It was just us... quietly talking. Then... Rich reached over... and touched my hand. This was the first time we had ever touched. He said... "I always wondered what your hands felt like... I never imagined they would be so soft."

I loved that car ride.

So... we got married on my 18th birthday at the courthouse in Grand Forks a month later. Neither of our families were there. Before I had left home... all of my friends tried to talk me out of going... and I actually had a school counselor ask me if I was making the whole thing up just to get attention! Rich's friends at the base had tried to talk him out of it too. But we knew what we had. A true friendship... and love for each other that reached beyond normal circumstances. We were meant to be together.

We have been through so much these past 18 years. I got pregnant with Hannah... our daughter who is now 17 years old. Right after I got pregnant... Rich was discharged from the Air Force. We ended up on welfare living with my mother. Rich had a few odd jobs... but nothing good enough to survive without welfare on. We moved to Colville... where we live now. Rich got a really good job in a nursing home as a certified nursing assistant. He worked their for 10 years. He also became certified to draw blood as well. His employer was going to pay for him to go to college to become a nurse... then it happened. Our world turned upside down.

Rich became very ill in 1995. His doctors were treating him for all kinds of things. Pneumonia... bronchitis... everything. He struggled to work for a year. He finally got so bad that he had to quit his job. He couldn't work anymore. He could not breath... he had no energy... and he told me he felt like he was drowning in his own fluids. We had him in and out of the emergency room so many times. He would never get better. One night... he could not breathe at all hardly and the ambulance once again took him to the ER. The doctor wanted to give Rich a valium and send him home. I guess he thought Rich was just having a panic attack and was hyperventilating. I told the doctor that I was not leaving that hospital until our family doctor came in to see him. I told him that if I took Rich home that night... that he would die... I was sure of it. Finally after a little while... our doctor came. He told me he would admit Rich and do one final test in the morning. Morning came and they did a colored ultrasound of Rich's heart.

They finally found out what was wrong. Rich was suffering from congestive heart failure. He had been getting sicker and sicker for a year. They put him in intensive care and monitored him very carefully.

I had been through alot of praying for Rich to be saved. I wanted him to ask Jesus in his heart so bad. I didn't want him to die without being saved because I wanted him in heaven if he did. I just flat did not want him to die at all! The first night he was in i.c.u., one of the respiratory therapists went in to see him. This man was a religious man... and right before Rich "crashed" and was put on the ventilator... this man helped Rich invite Jesus into his much weakened heart... and he was saved!!! In more ways than one. When we are weak... the Lord is strong. He becomes our strength. My bible has the words that Jesus spoke in red letters. And in 2 Corinthians 12:9 there is a part that says... "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

On December 24th, 1996... Rich was taken to Spokane to Sacred Heart Medical Center. He was in and out of doctor's offices and hosptial emergency rooms so many times I could not begin to count them all. Rich was on a rollercoaster of sickness. He would get a little better... then he would get worse... and on and on like that. During this time though... The Heart Institue had him in cardiac rehab... and we also went to classes discussing the possiblitiy of him needing a heart transplant. We also learned about a device called an L-VAD... left ventricual assist device.

Wow... look where life had taken us. I never thought that night at the Red Lobster that Rich would need a mechanical heart pump. Never in a million years do things like this cross your mind... until you are there.

Rich did all he could to get as healthy as he could during this time... his heart was still failing him worse. He ended up in the i.c.u. at Sacred Heart a couple days before Valentine's Day in 2001. So from 1995 to 2001... all of this time... I felt like I was watching my first love die. Rich's cardiologist wanted to do everything he could for Rich before giving him over to the transplant/mechanical heart team. He wanted to keep Rich in the hospital on i.v. medications to help his heart pump better. Rich was so sick that he could not lift his head off of the pillow. Rich did not want to be stuck on an i.v. He knew... because of the classes that we took.. that he could actually have a chance to get stronger if he had the mechanical heart pump (l-vad). He made me go after his doctor and had me bring him back to the room. He begged his doctor to please let him get the mechanical heart pump. He begged him with tears in his eyes. He was scheduled the next day for a surgery. The day before Valentine's Day... Rich got his heart pump. We now call it "L-VAD Day".

I had to work the whole time during this. I had to go to work at 2:00a.m. and I would get done at 10:30a.m. I would go home... take a shower... change clothes get Hannah ready and drive down to Spokane (about 70 miles one way). I had to learn how to take care of my husband. He had a device implanted into his abdomen that had a drive line protruding from his side. This was attached to an electric source. Rich had a machine that was plugged into the wall that powered his heart pump. He could also use two battery packs that he would wear in little holsters to pump his heart as well. These batteries allowed him to be mobile... and not attached to a wall. I had to learn how to do a sterile dressing change on the site where his drive line came out of him. This had to be kept extremely sterile and clean at all times. If infection set into that site... Rich would die.. because the infection would go right to his heart and into his blood stream.

I also had to learn how to pump Rich's heart with a manual hand pump that they taught us how to use just in case all power failed and there was no battery backup available. I remember Rich laying in bed... and a whole bunch of nurses were standing around the bed. We were all there to get the chance to pump Rich's heart. Some of the nurses pumped it faster than others... probably because they were nervous. But the ones who pumped it slowly... Rich said... "Ummmm... can you please go a little faster?" He said he had felt woosey when they didn't go fast enough. Then it was my turn... everyone said to him... "How much does your wife really love you? You sure you want her to do this?" All joking of course. I made my husband's heart beat.

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I need to go and get some things done. I will finish these thoughts later... I promise! ~Suzii~

~to be continued~