My Soul Mate

I met my soul mate Kari 11 years ago. At the time I didn't know she was even looking at me. I was going through a really rough time in my life. I was going through a nasty divorce at the time and really wasn't thinking about moving on with my life. I was a paramedic and every time I took a patient to the ER where she worked she was always in the room to help with the pt. it took me a while to catch on, and every time I went out to the smoking area she would always follow me out and we would talk. On August 17th I asked her out to supper. We went to a place called Baxter's Cafe. We went back to my apartment and she spent the night. We talked all night long, I let everything out about what was going on in my life. From that day on we have rarely spent more than a day apart.
Kari started getting sick about 6 months after we met, there were days when she couldn't even get out of bed she was so sick. We moved to her hometown where I got a job as a paramedic/firefighter. Kari kept getting sicker and sicker and she ended up in the hospital quite a bit. She was finally referred to a really big hospital where they found one of her immune system levels was gone and 2 others were critically low. They started her on monthly infusion that would "boost" her immune system. At first we were able to do them at home since I was a paramedic. We would put 3 small needles into her stomach and the medicine would pump in over 4 hours. She would end up with really large bumps on her stomach due to the medicine. She would get quite sore from the infusions and she would be sick for a few days afterwards. The infusions helped a lot though and she was able to lead a fairly normal life. I was able to spend my days off with her and go visit the agents that she managed. We really didn't spend much time apart.
Kari had terrible "heartburn" all the time and ended up having Nisan surgery which fixed the problem. With Kari's immune system problem it would be nearly impossible for us to have kids. Her body would abort a male and we knew a girl would end up with the same immune system problem. We made the hard decision that she should have a tubal ligation. It was a very hard decision since Kari didn't have kids and with this being done we would never have kids together. I have two boys from my first marriage and they fell in love with Kari from day one, and I think she loved them back just as much. She knew she would never replace their mother, but she could love them more than her.
Life pretty much went on as good as it could, we both had good jobs. Kari's mom and dad gave us some land in one of their pastures for a wedding present and we ended up putting our dream home on it. We had so much fun designing and helping build our house. We had fun picking out paint colors, carpet and all the little odds and ends together. We liked all the same things so we never had any type of an argument over anything. We moved in in September of 2005.
Kari started developing severe pain in her abdomen in 2007 and ended up in the ER many times. We went back to the big hospital where they ran numerous tests, poked and prodded her all over and could not come up with an answer. Back home we went, no answers. The pain became more and more frequent and lasted longer. In 2008 she was referred to a different hospital. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 Kari had over 18 different surgeries with no answers as to what was causing her pain. One doctor would run one test and it would come back abnormal and we would think we had an answer, then they would run it again to rule out a false positive and it would come back normal, back to square one. In 2010 Kari was referred to a hospital on the west coast. She spent most of the summer and fall out there. By this time she had over 500 days that she spent in a hospital room. They ended up doing a procedure where they injected a chemical on her nerves that were causing the pain. The procedure worked but would only last for 6 month to a year and she would have to return to have it done again.
Through the years Kari had lost her job and we were depending on just my income which was barely enough to get by on. With the mounting medical bills and all the expenses of travel, hotels, and meals we drained all our savings and had basically loaned ourselves to the limit. A benefit was held which helped tremendously.
In 2011 Kari had a new immunologist who had a pain doctor in the same clinic he was in. It was decided that a nerve stimulator would be implanted over the nerves that were causing her pain and in July it was placed and seems to be helping.