Mary: She Used to Laugh; Now She Cries

By Samuel Sbraccia

Samuel and his wife, Mary, have a truly unbelievable story of real love for each other. This has been proved time and again by what fate has dealt them throughout their forty-three, going on forty-four, years of marriage. This is a remarkable story of how they handled each and every obstacle that they had to face together, Mary with her multiple sclerosis and Samuel with his cancer and being Marys primary caregiver for forty-some years. It is a survivors story that shows and proves that when someone really loves someone, nothing can stop them when it comes to that persons well-being. In addition, this book was written to help anyone who is currently a caregiver to know that they are not alone and to teach them how to handle the problems associated with being a caregiver. It is forty-three years of experience to help understand and handle just about every situation involved with being the caregiver of anyone with any condition at all. As you will see for yourself in this book, Samuel has professed his love for his wife, Mary, since the day they were married and has proved it over and over every single day since they have been together and still does to this very day. Samuel not only believes but has proved it over and over that when you really and truly love someone, anything and everything is attainable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503588202

Samuel Sbraccia

Samuel was born on August 12, 1948. He was born and raised in South Philadelphia by his loving parents, Margaret and Daniel Sbraccia. Since his birth, he was taught the values of helping others and those in need and never forgetting where he came from no matter what levels in life he may attain. With this in mind, he has risen to his current position of president of a multimillion-dollar association that he currently represents, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is respected by everyone who knows him because of his love for his wife, daughter, and three granddaughters. He is a very charitable person and never says no to someone in need. He believes that by helping those in need, he is not only helping them but also helping himself by making him a better person. He remembers when, as a child, his family experienced many hard times and when his father worked not one job but three at the same time to give and provide for his family everything that they needed. Samuel surely proves that he himself is made from the same mold as his father, Daniel.

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Copyright © 2015 by Samuel Sbraccia.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015911733

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-8822-6

                Softcover        978-1-5035-8821-9

                eBook             978-1-5035-8820-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 07/23/2015

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CONTENTS

Preface

The Onset

Our Trip to Florida

New Hope for Mary

Over Time This Disease Caused More and More Problems for Mary

It Is Really Hard to Watch This Disease Try to Destroy a Person

Some Things You Should Know about Being a Caregiver

Do You Believe in God? I Certainly Do, and I Can Prove That He Exists!

How Could They or Why Would They?

Finally It Was Time to Get Some Needed Help

Some of the Things That People Ask and Tell Me

Know That Some People Will and Do Take Advantage of Disabled People

You Must Prepare Yourself and Realize That Things Will Get Worse for the Person with MS, and You Must Be Prepared

You Really Don’t Know Who Your Real Friends Are until Something like MS Strikes You or a Family Member

Being between a Rock and a Hard Place

Avoiding Arguments with the Person You Are Taking Care Of

Things That Can and Will Hurt You the Caregiver

Once You Place Your Loved One in a Nursing Facility, You Must Prepare Yourself for the Inevitable

Mary’s Condition Is Constantly Getting Worse and Her Inabilities More and More Pronounced

Always Try to Remember and Understand

It Truly Does Get Harder and Harder as Time Passes

What I Must Do in Order to Get Mary into a Nursing Facility

Now That I Know and Fully Understand What Both Mary and My Situations Are, There Is Nothing to Do but to Handle Them

Now that You Are Alone, You Can Go Places and Do Things That You Have Put Off Doing for Who Knows How Long

Every Day Our Separation Is Now Getting Closer

Now with Everything in the Works and Getting Everything Started, All That Is Left to Do Is to Spend Down the Money

Everything Is Done, and Now Mary Is Ready to Enter the Nursing Facility

In Conclusion

T o my wife, Mary, whom I have loved since we met right until this very day and always will. She truly was the wind beneath my wings, the one who made me accomplish things that I do not think I would have been able to without her help and support.

To every caregiver out there who has basically given up his life to take care of the needs of another. They can definitely relate to everything that I have written and said in this book.

To all future caregivers, I truly hope this book helps them know and allows them to see for themselves exactly the types of things and situations that they will have to cope with and do in order to survive being a caregiver.

To all of you who have purchased my book for whatever reason.

I truly hope that this book gives everyone who reads it an inside view and a real heads-up as to what to expect should you ever be in the position of being a caregiver.

As they say, experience is the best teacher, and in this book, I am giving you my forty-three years of experience, which can and will do nothing but help you should you ever be put in the position that I was in.

Regardless of the reason why your loved one must be placed in a nursing facility, make sure you do it before your love turns to resentment. Because once this occurs, if you let it, it will do nothing but hurt both of you deeply in the future and cause you and your loved one to do who knows what.

I really feel in my heart that this is a book that has to be written to help others. I truly hope that everyone who reads it agrees.

Preface

E verything in this book is true and happened just the way it was written.

It shows and describes our hurdles and problems from start to finish when coping with this terrible disease.

It was written in the hopes of helping and guiding anyone who is put in this type of situation to cope with, handle, and survive it.

The following are four important organizations that offer help and assistance with this and many other dreaded diseases:

1. The hospice service that helped us in our situation, which helped us tremendously, Serenity Hospice.

2. The Multiple Sclerosis Society, which offered assistance with things like painting the deck and ramp that I had installed in our home, cleaning the gutters, etc., all free of charge.

3. The Gloucester County Social Services, which helped me with getting Mary Medicaid coverage for her to be able to be placed in the nursing facility where she now resides.

4. The Elmwood Hills Healthcare Center in Camden County, New Jersey, which made both Mary’s and my transition as easy and as simple as possible. They are also providing the best possible care for Mary twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and are doing a great job.

I will never be able to thank these people and places enough for the help and guidance that they gave and continue to give me in this very hard situation.

The Onset

T oday is May 21, 2014, and my wife, Mary, has been living and coping with MS (multiple sclerosis) for forty-some years.

Mary and I met when I was in the US Air Force and stationed in Belleville, Illinois. She was twenty-three years old and had a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Kelly, from her first marriage; her husband had been killed on a construction job when a wall fell on him, after having been discharged from the air force and serving in Vietnam.

Mary and I met in 1969 and have been together for approximately two years when we married on August 14, 1971.

Once we married, I moved Mary and Kelly to Kansas City, Missouri, where we waited out my enlistment in the service. We lived there for about a year and a half in a beautiful apartment that I had found for us near Truman Corners, Missouri. We loved our apartment, which had a gigantic living room; a dining area; two bathrooms, one outside the second bedroom and one in the master bedroom, which had a ten-foot changing area before the bathroom itself; and a full, large kitchen. In addition, it had a walk-out balcony that overlooked the three swimming pools, a kiddy pool, a diving pool, and a regular swimming pool. The apartment and outside area were just beautiful. I think that back then, the apartment cost us $250 a month.

Early on after we married, Mary started having problems when she would try to stand up from a sitting position. It would take her three or four tries before she could stand. We thought that it was a knee problem at first and thought nothing more about it since she was only about twenty-five years old at that time.

Time passed and we separated from the military and decided to move to my hometown of Philadelphia. We got discharged on January 21, 1972. After arriving in Philadelphia, we lived with my parents in their home for about one month, until we found a really nice apartment in Southern New Jersey. We decided to move to New Jersey because in some ways it was similar to Illinois, wide open and not built-up like the big city.

Our apartment unit was on the second floor of our complex. We lived there for one year and one month. Shortly after we moved into our apartment, Mary got a call from her parents in Illinois, and they told her that they had sold their home and were going to move to New Jersey to be close to us and asked if we could please find them an apartment near us as soon as possible. Both Mary and I were shocked that they had decided to move to New Jersey so quickly.

I immediately found them an apartment about four or five miles away from us that would allow having small pets. They had a small poodle, and this apartment would accommodate them.

When they were ready to move out, I flew to St. Louis and they met me at the airport, and I drove them back to New Jersey in their car to their new apartment. They just loved it. Deep down inside, I knew they would like anything, because Mary was their only daughter and Kelly was their only grandchild.

About nine or ten months into renting our apartment lease, we decided it was time to buy a house. Before buying our first home, we looked at house after house and liked this in one house and that in another and so on. Finally, we found a house that Mary really liked. It was an L-shaped ranch house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms and a half bath, a partial basement, a full attic, an eat-in kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and a family room. It was on a lot 75 feet by 150 feet, plenty of room for Kelly to play in. When we told Mary’s mom and dad that we were buying a house, they asked if they could move in with us and share the expenses rather than stay in their apartment. Knowing how much Mary’s parents loved her and Kelly and that they wanted to live with them, how could we say no? We agreed, and on the day that we moved into our first home, they moved in too.

We knew that living with others would be hard on all concerned parties, but we also knew that we were doing the right thing, as far as we were concerned. It did tend to be hard at times, all of us living together under one roof, but whenever there was a problem, we would have a family meeting and resolve the problem no matter what it was.

Shortly after we purchased our home, for Mary’s birthday I had a sixteen-by-thirty-two ground pool put in for Mary and Kelly. We all just loved the pool and used it just about every day. Mary really loved it, because she would let Kelly have pool parties all the time, and guess who got to make the hamburgers and hot dogs. Me!

Anyway, about a year or two after we moved in, Mary started to have balance problems when she walked. This was the onset of us thinking that something was definitely wrong.

I, being very concerned, decided to find out exactly what her problem was and have it fixed. I took her to doctor after doctor, all specialists in their own fields, with no results. Then just by luck, I decided to take her to a doctor in Philadelphia whom I had been going to, to see if he had any ideas. This doctor would let special patients enter from the back to avoid the long wait in the waiting room. The day finally came for Mary’s appointment, and I took her there. While we waited to see the doctor, he walked through the area where a few people were waiting their turn. As he walked through, he stopped and looked at this lady who had her little son with her. He turned to her and said, So-and-So, how long has he been throwing up?

The mother was shocked and said, For two days now, but how did you know?

He said, I noticed there were some broken blood vessels showing on the side of his temples.

Everyone in there was just shocked at his diagnosis.

Anyway, when it was Mary’s turn, he pointed to a room at the end of a long hall and told us to go in there. We started walking, Mary first, and he put his arm out to stop me and asked me to wait a minute. He watched Mary walk from the waiting area to the room and then told me to follow, which I did.

When he came into the room and sat down, he asked Mary a few questions and then said that he had a friend who was a neurologist, and he wanted Mary to see him. He also said that it usually took months to get an appointment to see this doctor but that he would call him himself to schedule us as soon as possible. We thanked him, and he made the call. He got us an appointment for the following week.

One week later, we went to see this doctor, who examined Mary from top to bottom and even went so far as to measure all parts of her body one limb at a time. The examination took about two hours. When he was through, he told us he wanted us to see this other doctor as soon as possible for some tests, to which we said that we would. As soon as we got home, I called the doctor’s office and scheduled an appointment for Mary, which was to be in a week or two.

When we went to see this doctor, he told us that he wanted to have Mary into the hospital so that he could run a number of different tests on her to find out exactly what the problem was. We agreed, and he set her up to be admitted to the only hospital that he practiced in, which was not in the best part of Philly. The following week, Mary was in the hospital for her tests. At that time, I was working in an office that my father and I had in Center City, Philadelphia. It was about thirty-five minutes away from the hospital that Mary was in, which made it convenient for me to visit her and be there if the doctor needed me for