Being in Love at 6:30 AM

“I am head over heels in love with you,” Jeff would call to tell me every morning around 6:30 AM, “Oh are you awake?”

“I’m awake now,” I would tell him, “and I am so in love with you my heart is swollen to the size of a beach ball.”

It was all part of our morning routine.

“Did you take your Lactulose or your morning meds yet?” I would ask him

“No, I forgot, I’ll take them right now,” he would tell me. On the other end of the phone, I would hear rustling noises. Jeff was grabbing the lactulose and then opening his mini-fridge where he kept the Coca-Cola. He used Coca-Cola as a chaser for his nasty tasting Lactulose that he hated so much. I could hear gulping noises, then a disgusted noise followed by a desperate chugging of Coca-Cola.

After that, I heard the rattling of pills and more swallowing noises.

In Love No Matter What

“Took everything,” he would tell me. “If I shit my pants from the lactulose while I’m in bed with you, it’s your fault, not mine, you’re the one who made me take the lactulose”. Lactulose is a medication used for liver failure. It binds with the excess ammonia that a functioning liver would normally excrete. Then it causes a laxative effect, to push the otherwise toxic amounts of ammonia, out of the body.

“I’d rather keep your liver as happy as I can, so go ahead and poop in my bed. That’s why I have PCAs, they help me do my laundry,” I told him.

“Well, I’ll tell them myself that you told me to poop your bed while they’re scrubbing my diarrhea off of My Little Pony’s face on your sheets.” Jeff said.

“If I wasn’t so in love with you or too disabled, I’d run over there and smack you,” I told him laughing.

Our Morning Routine

After our little phone exchange, he came over to the apartment and let himself in with the key I had given him a copy of, once we started “doing it” together.

When he got to the apartment we would say good morning to each other again. As Jeff was climbing in bed with me, we would tell each other how in love we were again. We never got tired of saying.  I reached over and tucked my Trolls comforter around Jeff and we got all snuggly together in bed.

Then we would just talk

Sometimes we would talk about what we were like when we were little kids. Other times we would talk about nursing homes and hospitals we’d been in.

I told him how I couldn’t seem to stay out of the hospital. I either had electrolyte imbalances, issues with my vital signs, or a UTI that got out of control. We would talk about what going through school had been like for us.  He told me about all of the car dealerships he’d worked for. I told him about nursing school and then switching my major to writing. He asked about all the writing projects I had going on at the moment.

Writing Inspiration From Being In Love

“Can you help me write a memoir about my life?” Jeff asked one morning. As we were both cuddling together under the Trolls comforter

“Definitely,” I told him.  “I would love to do that.  Your story could inspire a lot of people. I know it will touch a lot of people’s hearts.” Even if I hadn’t been completely in love with him, his story was a story that needed to be released to the world.

“That would be awesome,” Jeff said

After our morning snuggles and chat session, Lauren or Melody would come in to get me ready for the day. They usually came around 8:30 AM.  As soon as they got there they would get busy crushing up my pills. Then heating up water to mix with the crushed pills. Once they mixed the crushed pills with hot water they added the liquid medications. The whole concoction would go through my J tube and straight into my intestine. 

Jeff: The Watch Dog I Am In Love With

Jeff watched them like a hawk as they disconnected my old IV bags. Then they hooked up two new IV bags and the tube feeding bags. They changed the IV bags and tube feeding bags every 24 hours. He watched them push my crushed meds through my J tube while I dry heaved. At the same time, I pushed my IV meds through my port. My body was having a harder and harder time tolerating anything through my digestive tract.

Jeff had a learning disability and due to his most recent traumatic brain injury had trouble retaining new information, but he was so in love with me, and so dedicated to making sure that I was okay, that he pushed past that barrier and memorized exactly how everything should go for my morning and evening care. He could do it in his sleep.  Jeff would catch any mistakes made by Lauren or Melody. Even though he would continue chilling with me, he was still aware of what they were doing.

Jeff and I Were in Love With the Game “Fashion Show”

Once we were all done with my morning medication routine I connected my IVs and tube feeding. Then I pressed start on all three pumps.

Because I couldn’t dress myself, Jeff liked to help me once we finished with meds.

“Just pick me out four different shirts,” I would tell him from my hospital bed that I spent most of my time in at home.  “I’ll choose between the four different shirts you pick me out.”

So, he would go through my drawers and pick out four shirts. Together we would narrow down the shirts as we looked at them until we finally decided on the perfect one. Then he would go into my pants drawer and find me four pairs of pants. They had to match the shirt I was wearing.   Sometimes he needed a little help from Lauren or Melody on what actually matched. For a guy, he was pretty fashion-conscious for the most part.

Playing Barbie Dolls

“It’s kind of like playing with barbie dolls when I dress you. I always wanted to play with my sister’s barbies growing up, but they never let me, so instead, I twisted their heads off and buried them in the backyard.” Jeff told me one day as he was putting one of my legs into the pair of pants.”

“That’s awful!” I told him,

“What’s awful is that they wouldn’t share their toys. I was just teaching them a lesson about sharing.” He gave me one of his “cat that just ate the canary smiles” that he was so famous for. I was so in love with Jeff’s twisted sense of humor, no matter how much pain I was in, he could always get me to smile.

Once I was wearing my “Jeff-Line Fashion”, Lauren or Melody did my hair while he messed around on his laptop. He knew they couldn’t do anything too bad to me just brushing and braiding or styling my hair

Just Lying in Bed, In Love

If Melody or Lauren didn’t need to accompany me to any appointments and if Jeff didn’t have any appointments, we would watch movies together until lunchtime. Just lying in bed in love with a person that I thought was the most amazing man who ever existed put me in a nirvana state. Jeff said it did the same for him.,

Jeff decided that I was a deprived child because of all the classic movies I hadn’t seen.  We watched “Cannonball Run”, “Ernest Goes to Jail”, “Ernest Goes to School”, “Stepbrothers”, “Superbad,” “Armageddon”, “Blair Witch Project”, all the “Grumpy Old Men” movies, all the “Bad Boys” movies, “Baywatch (both the old shows of it and the new movie that came out a few years ago), and so much more.

Jeff would go over to the main building for lunch.  Sometimes I would go with him just to say hi to people and be sociable, plus I was just so in love with Jeff I couldn’t stand being away from him for that awful forty-five minutes that was lunch. Usually, though, it was just too much aggravation. 

Always in the Way at Mealtimes at Side by Side Assisted Living

Terri the cook did like me. However, she and Cindy were constantly on my case around mealtimes at the main building. 

Everyone had an assigned seat there, in the kitchen or dining room.  In my mind, it seemed like there was a lot of empty space for me. I could pull up to my spot at the fireplace and sit next to the two comfy chairs. That way I could enjoy watching the fake flames, interact with the other residents, and be friendly. 

However, according to Terri and Cindy, wherever I parked my wheelchair, it was always the wrong spot. I was always in the way. They said that I had to move or the aides serving the meal would spill hot food on me.

Completely 100% in Love With Jeff

For the aides to spill hot food on me where I was sitting, it would have to be intentional. They would need to bring the plates of food out, veer away from the residents at the table, purposefully walk over to the corner I was sitting in and dump the plate of food over my head. 

I’d had so much crap happen to me and been treated so badly in my 26 years of life, that I actually wouldn’t really have been that surprised if that happened to me. It didn’t, but I just stopped going over to the main building during meals. Chrissy had originally told me it was mandatory, but no one actually really seemed to care. The incident with John had changed things. It seemed like no one at Side by Side really cared what did or didn’t happen to me. I was just a screwed-up girl looking for trouble with men. The only one who did care was Jeff, he would have run the Boston Marathon for me and then turned around, ran it back, and asked “what next?”

We were 100% in love with other and it was completely unconditional.