Peter and Dina have been married for three years, and they are determined to make their marriage last at least fifty years.
Of course, there's the minor little matter of getting married in mid-life. Then along came disabilities. Dina shared her story:
Peter suffered from back pain caused by two herniated discs when we met. His suggestion that love with him would be different than any other man was quite seductive and true in ways we didn’t anticipate. One early morning, a sneeze changed our lives. Peter had ruptured two discs in his back. He endured severe pain for a day before we landed in the emergency room of a nearby hospital. By this time, Peter was in extreme pain, barely able to move. It took the doctors hours to discover that he had lost feeling below the waist. It’s very surreal to hear someone say ‘we have to get to surgery in the next hour’ .
Surgery went fine, but Peter was left with little feeling below the waist. He’s my hero because, in his shoes, I wouldn’t have coped half as well. Rehab was slow but he always kept a positive attitude. He learned how to re-walk. My happiest memory is seeing Peter walk down the aisle and meet me beachside in Grand Cayman to say our vows four months after surgery. I knew what it took to get there. Our new life had lots of challenges; chiefly, for me, how to be a wife, not a caregiver. How could I reconcile the dreams and hopes I’d held for our life and marriage to the new reality? Then, the tables turned.
Thank heaven for diligent doctors. My eye doctor didn’t like the trend he saw on some tests and asked my primary care doc to do an MRI. After what seemed like hundreds of tests, the doctor diagnosed me with MS. Oddly enough, this is right before we had our renewal ceremony-just seven months earlier we were dealing with Peter’s back. We started our marriage really testing the ‘for better or worse’ path. I suffered vertigo and lost my balance and energy for a time. I still have bouts of fatigue and near constant insomnia.
Dina encourages couples to see challenges as blessings. She launched a blog and a business as a result of her life lessons: This Marriage Thing and Mediation Mensch. "I launched 'This Marriage Thing' to encourage others not to wait until fate intervenes to have this life-shaping conversations," said Dina. "Create your life now. Without our disabilities, we might not have gotten to where we are not. We appreciate each day, and each other on most days. We are so grateful. We see an exciting future together. We're planning to take care of our later needs so we can be partners first."
During the first two years of their marriage, Dina and Peter had to rediscover new roles and identities to accommodate their roles as occasional caretakers whenever the other needed it. Peter also created a virtual company so that each of them could work from home.
"Peter does a great job of coping with the uncertainty that comes with MS. Besides, vertigo, insomnia and fatigue, I suffer from mood swings that can be pretty hairy," Dina said, with a smile. "He’s so patient, given that he never knows what shape I’ll be in that day. And, maybe that’s the message for couples who share disabilities and everyone else: love (with a heavy dose of patience and laughter) does conquer all!"
