How I Found Recovery! Part 9

I HAVE BEEN CLEAN FOR 14 YEARS, 11 MONTHS, and 20 DAYS!
A TOTAL OF 5469 DAYS!

I had moved to Kingston, Pa which is right over the bridge from Wilkes Barre, and it wasn't long after that, that Tom moved in with me. Now you see coming from an Italian family with my grandmother still living, I was living in sin according to her, and one day while visiting her she said to me, Lori you know that living with a guy is not right, if you love this guy like you say you do then you need to marry him. I tried to tell her that you never buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first, but she had no clue of what I was getting at. I also said to her that if we are sleeping in two different rooms then it isn't a sin. However even though she was 85 years old she wasn't buying it. So after celebrating my 2 years of recovery on May 31st , that August Aniguy and I were married. We got married on August 1, 1995 on a beach in Maine called Fortune Rocks. Aniguy's sponsor Bob had a summer home in Kennybunkport and he and his girlfriend were our best man and maid of honor. Along with them there were several other people from recovery that came from as far away as Nova Scotia, England, and a good friend from Rhode Island. My family was not real happy that I choose to get married this way but if any of you ever experienced an Italian wedding you would know that nothing is small, I really didn't want to have a wedding were I needed to invite no less than 600 people. Now if my parents were alive that would have been a whole different story. I have no regrets, it was so beautiful and one of the happiest days of my life. We stayed in Maine vacationing for 1 month.

After returning home life was good, I continued to pour my heart and soul into my recovery. A friend of mine was getting ready to celebrate 10 years clean up in Scranton his name was Jack. He had invited us to his celebration, he had asked me to give him his 10 year coin at his celebration, I was honored. Well after his celebration we did what mostly all addicts do after a meeting we go for coffee at Denny's. While having coffee I asked Jack what he wanted to do after we left there and he told me he wanted to go to strip club, I said yeah right, he said no really that's what I want to do. I thought to myself people in recovery don't do this kind of thing, but it was his night so I tell Tom what the plan was and his response was you've never even seen a "R" rated movie. He started to laugh. Well low and behold we all get into a car and go to this BYOB strip club. There was Jack and his wife, another friend of ours Joyce and her husband and myself and Tom. What an experience that was, the only thing left to say was that I reaped the rewards when we got home.

It was about a month or so after that, that I started not to feel very good, I was throwing up and having really bad stomach cramps. I thought to myself is God playing a funny trick on me, I'm clean and now I'm going to die...... The pain was so bad one night that Tom brought me to the ER at the local hospital. They ran several tests and when the doctor came in to give me the prognosis, he asked if it was okay to tell me the news in front of my husband, I said of course it is, just tell me doc, am I dying. He laughed and said no, but congratulations you're having a baby. OMG I thought but I was so excited.

Over the course of the next couple of months I continued to work and then Christmas was upon us. Holidays weren't like they use to be especially with my dad dying on Christmas Eve and now my mother being gone. I guess it really never hit me like it did that Christmas because for the first time in my life I was actually happy. I wasn't feeling all that great on Christmas day so we decided we would just stay home and celebrate our first Christmas together alone. I was kind of tired all day so I went and took a nap. After waking up from my nap, I was having a lot of pain. Then it happened something a woman never wants to see when they are pregnant. Tom called my doctor and he told him to bring me to the hospital. Once the doctor examined what he told us to bring with us, he came in and said I'm so sorry you lost your baby. I once again couldn't believe what I was hearing. He said we are going to do a DNC, but I just want to do an ultra sound to make sure that things are what they should be. As he is doing the ultra sound, he kept going to one particular area and being a nurse I knew something was wrong, I wasn't really paying to much attention to the monitor because I was crying and I just wanted to keep my eyes closed hoping some how that this was just a bad dream. I hear him say wow, he said "Lori it's Christmas time and miracles do happen this time of year and your miracle is you were pregnant with twins. You only lost one of the babies. Once again I couldn't believe what I was hearing, only this time it was something good that I was hearing. The doctor ran some further testing and told me that my progesterone levels were low and that I would need to take pills every 4 hours to keep my levels up and that he was putting me on complete best rest for the next 7 months.

To be continued ................