The Tale of the Missing Tonsil

Twenty-four years ago I married a man who was in the Navy. He was from the same town in Arkansas that I was from, but he was stationed in Virginia Beach, Virginia, so that is where we lived.

I was crazy in love. This man was everything I thought I wanted so I ignored important warning signs. I knew his dad had been physically abusive to my husband and to my mother-in-law, but I wanted to believe that my husband wouldn't be abusive toward me so that is what I believed. I was wrong. I don't want to go into the pain, fear and emotional turmoil of my marriage in this post. I tried to make our relationship last. I tried to help, I tried to understand, I tried to forgive, but I also wanted to survive. About fifteen months into the marriage, I left my husband.

I literally hid out at a friend's house for a week. My friend took pictures of me the night I arrived on her doorstep. She wanted to call the police, but I asked her not to. I didn't want to press charges, I just wanted out of the marriage. I contacted a lawyer and began divorce proceedings. At this time there was a six month waiting period in Virginia before a divorce became final.

The whole ordeal became very ugly. We weren't rich by any means, but we fought over every possession that we had. I had been living on my own for six years before we got married so I brought almost all of our furniture, appliances and household items to the marriage. We had traded in our older vehicles and purchased a new car. The car was the most expensive thing we owned. My lawyer and I made a list of all our possessions. I wanted to keep the car so I was willing to give up just about everything I had brought to the marriage so that the division of our assets would be equitable. My husband agreed to this property settlement and signed the appropriate papers. All of this squabbling lasted about three weeks.

During the entire three weeks, I was sick. I had a sore throat and an ear ache in my left ear. The symptoms were similar to a common cold, but I couldn't get well. I didn't go to a doctor. I kept using over-the-counter remedies, but I kept feeling worse instead of better. Finally, my friend pretty much forced me to visit a doctor. The doctor took my blood pressure and sent me to the hospital. My blood pressure was dangerously low. My blood was septic. I was one sick woman. I had an abscess in the left side of my throat.

I was given all sorts of medication and had IV's in both arms. The doctors were trying to get me well enough for surgery. I don't remember all the details, but after 24 hours it was decided that the abscess had to be taken care of. I went under the knife around 11:30PM my second night in the hospital. My throat was in sad shape. And my left tonsil became a casualty during surgery.

At some point during my fourth day in the hospital, my husband had a friend drive him to the hospital parking lot and that man, my now ex-husband, drove off in our car. Yep. I was flat on my back in the hospital and he took the car away from me. I couldn't even talk much less yell like I wanted to. I wrote a note to one of my friends when she was visiting me in the hospital and asked her if she could pick me up when I was released.

In the afternoon of day six, I was told I could leave the hospital. A nurse called my friend and she picked me up and took me to her house to recuperate. As soon as I could speak (about 36 hours later), I called my lawyer and told her what had happened with the car. My lawyer was furious! She made an appointment with my husband's commanding officer. She showed him my pictures from the night I left my husband. I don't know what all was said. I wish I could have been in the meeting. A courier brought a new property settlement to my friend's house for me to sign. I got everything except the car. Most of it was mine anyway, but it still felt so good to leave him with a car that we owed four years of payments on. (You may think I'm stupid, but I ended up giving my ex-husband some furniture and some items that his mother and grandmother had given us. I just couldn't see keeping a quilt his grandmother had made and some other things like that.)

So this is a small part of the story of my life. Don't feel sorry for me. I am a strong, independent, self-confident woman (with one tonsil). I am a survivor.