Her husband only made excuses for them and got mad at Gayle when informed about the thefts. It seems it was her fault for leaving money lying around. The marriage was going downhill fast.
Gayle was working twelve-hour night shifts four nights a week and with the MS she had was worn out on her time off. She could not do much housework and spent a lot of the time resting in bed. She did not feel good and when she mentioned that to her husband he told her that she just liked being sick. Then one of the mother-in laws grandchildren teased Sarge and was nipped. Just a small scratch, and as Gayle said, that if Sarge really wanted to bite he would have. It was his way of warning that he did not want any more teasing .Her Mother-in law insisted on having Sarge put to sleep and her husband sided with his mother. They argued about it but Gayle held her ground and finally her husband and mother-in law backed down. It was just another thing that upset Gayle's marriage.
Gayle stayed and kept working only because Sarge was her husband's dog and she felt she had to honor that because even though he did not care for the dog he would not let her have it.
Chapter 4
One day Gayle had a severe relapse of her MS. She started hallucinating. Her plate of food turned into a plate of worms and when she looked at her hands, she had no thumbs.
Her husband had her put in the psychiatric ward but did not tell them that she had Multiple sclerosis, so she was treated like the rest of the patients there. For three days, she did not get the proper treatment for her condition but she came out of it on her own. Gayle could not forgive him for putting her there.
Sarge was getting very old and sick with arthritis and finally died in Gayle's arms. She promptly moved out and filed for divorce. She rented another trailer and continued her long hours at the Hospital. She acquired another dog, a Rottwieler that she named “Raven”. She was in remission and getting along well, working at a job she loved, helping people.
However, the MS would not let her be and one morning her right foot just dropped. She could not control it. It just hung down, limp. Her Doctor prescribed a plastic brace on her ankle and under her foot to hold it up. She wore it for a year, still going to work all that time, until she finally got her feeling and control back.
Gayle had always kept in close touch with her parents by phone and letters. As the years went by, she got awards and letters of commendation for her work as a nurse. She was good at her profession and her patients and their relatives knew it and appreciated her very much. In her work, she learned how to recognize symptoms the layperson would not notice. This was true when she was talking to her mother on the telephone. She realized her mother was repeating herself a lot. She asked her father what was wrong and he thought it was just that she had a couple of beers before the call. She was doubtful about that because she had a great deal of experience with Alzheimer's disease and feared her mother may have it. She told her father what she thought and this was a revelation to him. The more Gayle described the disease the more her father thought she might be right. He took her to the Doctor and found Gayle was correct in her diagnosis.
A couple of years passed during which her mother slowly became more confused.
Her father did the best he could to take care of his wife, having to retire so he could stay home to do so.
Gayle used her vacation to visit her parents in Hawaii. They picked her up at the airport and it was a bit sad to realize that her mother did not know who she was, but Gayle knew what to expect. It was a nice visit even though her mother wondered who that girl was. She stayed a week and returned to Illinois and back to work.
Some time later Gayle was awakened about six A.M. by a phone call from her father who told her that her mother had died about an hour earlier. She was not surprised, as she had seen what condition her mother was in, when she visited earlier.
Gayle got the first flight that she could and two days later arrived back to be with her father and help with what she could. Her father met her at the airport and they went straight to the funeral home to make arrangements for cremation, which was what her mother had said long ago was what she wanted. They went for a last viewing and a few days later, they picked up the urn. Gayle stayed a few days to be sure her father was going to be all right and then had to return to her work.
