Our Love Saga

Samantha blushed and simply nodded.

Bruce turned to me and said, "The leadership team was discussing over dinner which of Samantha's contributions are more valuable to us, her role with the company or her husband. I'm sorry, AJ, but you came in a close second."

Samantha was beaming, but Bruce saw the puzzled expression on Scott and Monica's faces, so he explained. "You probably didn't know that our Samantha here is married to one of the most sought after high-technology consultants in the world. Saturn Systems has had AJ's ear since Samantha started here, and we owe a great deal of the organization's success and growth to the advice he has provided to us, all pro-bono I might add."

Bruce put his hand on Scott's shoulder and said, "In fact, Scott, you should thank AJ for your promotion. It was his advice that convinced us to create the position that you were just promoted into. I'm sure that you'll make us all proud. Anyway, congratulations again to both of you. Enjoy the rest of your evening."

Scott had a sour expression on his face as he took his seat, but it faded as more of the upper management team came around to offer their congratulations. After the rounds had been completed, dance music began to play and people began moving out onto the floor. I took Samantha's hand and escorted her onto the floor.

While we moved around to the music, I noticed that Scott and Monica had decided to also dance. Usually, when we danced, Samantha would simply melt into me, fusing her body so tightly against mine that our dancing couldn't be much more than two people slightly swaying to the rhythm of the music. It's not that we couldn't dance normally, it was just one of Samantha's ways of showing the world that she and I belonged to each other.

After two songs, the next one had a beat that wasn't conducive to our style, so Samantha and I returned to the table to take a break. Scott and Monica were already there, abiding in their refreshed drinks.

While I held her chair out for Samantha, Scott stood and asked, "Samantha, could I have the pleasure of this next dance?"

Samantha gasped and looked between me and Monica as she planted herself in her seat. Scott looked confused, so Monica said, "Scott, that was rude. How would you like it if some guy just came up and asked me to dance without asking your permission first?"

Scott blanched slightly, but he was not to be deterred. He asked, "Allen, would you mind if I asked Samantha for a dance?"

Not that I needed it, but I could tell by the squeeze of my hand under the table what Samantha's opinion of Scott's request was. I said, "If you danced with Samantha, I would feel duty-bound to ask Monica to dance. While Samantha has had years of experience dodging my two left feet on the dance floor, your poor wife would likely curse you for days if you were to subject her to dancing with me. I think it best for all if husbands danced exclusively with their own wife tonight."

Samantha leaned over and whispered in my ear, "I think our next few dances should be at home in our bed. I'm ready to leave."

So that's exactly what we did.

~~~

I took my pledge of responsibility for Samantha's health and happiness as seriously as she took hers for me. I paid attention to her expressions, her moods, her behavior, and her reactions to life around her in order to remain aware of her feelings. I knew when she had a headache, when she was uncomfortable, and when she was tired. I knew her moods; learning when to be sympathetic and when to be supportive. I kept track of her dental or doctor appointments and always tried to have my schedule clear in case she wanted me to accompany her.

However, I usually didn't pay too much attention to Samantha's menstrual cycle. I mean, I knew that she had one every month and did what I could to make her as comfortable as possible if I was home while she was having cramps, but they had never been something that I focus on to any great extent. That changed on a Sunday afternoon in February when Samantha asked me to run to the store to buy her more tampons.

I was not squeamish about purchasing feminine hygiene products, but it seemed like I was being asked to buy them much more frequently of late. I reminded Samantha that I had picked up a box of tampons for her the previous Friday, and that she typically used less than a box of twelve per menstrual cycle.

"AJ, please just go get them for me," Samantha pleaded. "I don't know why my flow is suddenly so heavy, but it is."

"I'm going now, but if you're using more than a dozen tampons within a couple of days, you need to get checked out. We'll discuss it when I get home."

And discuss it we did. Samantha admitted that her flow had been getting heavier for the past few months and the excessive bleeding was wearing on her physically. I wanted her to make an appointment with her gynecologist for the coming week, but she insisted that her projects at work were too critical for her right then to take any time until the following week at the earliest.

I accepted the reality that once her current menstrual cycle was over, there was no urgency as long as she got in to see the doctor before her next period. She promised me that she would make an appointment on Monday and let me know when it was so that I could arrange my travel schedule to allow me to accompany her.

I sat at my desk in my home office on Monday morning, considering how Samantha felt that her workload was more important than her health. Saturn System had grown from a regional value-added reseller of mid-range systems, primarily IBM RISC 6000 and AS-400 systems, to hold a national presence. Much of that growth was due to them following my suggestion that they focus their efforts on specific market segments rather than trying to sell to every type of business within a geographic area.

Saturn was now focused on retail, financial and local and state government accounts only, but they had opened sales offices in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco to service their dedicated markets in all areas of the country. Business for them was increasing every day, but regardless of how many more systems they sold, they still had only one Customer Advocate to coordinate the installation requirements, and that person was my wife.

It was time for me to change that. I knew that Samantha would blow a gasket if she suspected that I was insinuating myself into her career, but I was willing to take the chance if it meant protecting her health and happiness. I left a voicemail for Bruce Winters requesting a callback. It came fifteen minutes later.

"Thanks for returning my call, Bruce," I said after exchanging the typical pleasantries. "I want to ask that you don't mention our conversation to Samantha."

"Not a problem," Bruce said. "What can I do for you?"

I explained my growing concern over Samantha's workload and reminded Bruce of a previous conversation where I had made several recommendations for organizational changes at Saturn Systems that would be required for them to sustain their sales growth. Appointing Region Account Managers to support the individual account managers locally rather than relying on all their support to come from headquarters in San Antonio was one example. Increasing the number of Customer Advocates was another.

In the last year and a half, Samantha had gone from supporting an average of fifteen customer installation projects per month to more than seventy-five. Her reliance on the account managers to assist her with their install projects was impacting their ability to develop new customer accounts. Bruce and the other leaders at Saturn Systems had to see this.

"We understand, AJ," Bruce said. "Our biggest obstacle to getting Samantha some help has been Samantha herself. She rightfully claims that she is too busy with customer projects to train someone else to do the job. We've discussed this before; Samantha has essentially developed her role within the organization on her own. It looks nothing like it did when she was hired. No one else knows all the intricacies involved, so without her being able to do a knowledge-dump or mind-meld with somebody new, they would be lost."

"Okay," I said. "I will describe for you how to get past this obstacle that is my wife. I will put you in contact with a training organization that I have worked with in the past. They will be able to have one of their curriculum development specialists spend time with Samantha, gaining an understanding of, and then documenting everything that she does. They will create a training program from that curriculum and provide you with multiple options for the delivery of the training, including classroom, and computer-based. They will even develop operation manuals specific to the role that new customer advocates will always be able to refer to when the need arises."

"How long would something like that usually take?" Bruce asked with obvious interest.

"Thirty to ninety days," I said. "It will depend on how much you can get Samantha to contribute willingly versus what the curriculum development specialist has to wait to learn."

"What do you mean?"

I tried to explain, "I know Samantha keeps meticulous records of past projects. Rather than relying solely upon the observation of current projects to gather knowledge of how she does the job; if you could her to share the details of past projects, I believe that her records would allow someone to gain a deeper understanding much faster. Let them review her past projects and be able to ask her about them as they do so. Get Samantha to cooperate with that and you will have training within a couple of months."

"Send me the contact," Bruce said. "I'll run your suggestion by Fred, Carla, and Wayne. When they hear that it came from you, I'm sure that they'll be on board. Once they are, we'll make it well worth Samantha's while to cooperate with everything."

Fred, Carla, and Wayne made up the remainder of the upper management team at Saturn Systems. I knew and trusted all of them. "Look for an e-mail from me in the next five minutes," I told Bruce.

The only news that Samantha had to share with me when she got home that day was that she had made an appointment with her gynecologist for Tuesday of the following week. Her news on Thursday was significantly more interesting.

"A Director!" she kept exclaiming. "They're offering to make me an actual Director in the company! That's one level below a freakin vice president!"

As always, her excitement was contagious. I said, "That's great! What will the new title involve?"

"We are going to create Customer Advocate positions at each of the regional offices in addition to here at headquarters," she explained. "They will all report to me in the short-term, with the eventual goal being for them to report to regional supervisors who will then report to me. Initially, I will have approximately fifteen direct reports, but that will drop to five once supervisors are in place."

"Wait a second," I said. "You've always told me that you didn't have time to do your job and train someone else how to do your job at the same time. How are you going to train people, especially all around the country?"

Samantha crawled into my lap and kissed me until she felt her desired reaction under her thigh. She broke the kiss and said, "You forget that I know the management team that I work for. They would never have come up with the idea to hire an outside training organization to develop the required training curriculum and then deliver it. The idea had to come from someone else, and that someone else had to be my husband. Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're not mad?" I asked.

Wiggling her skirt-clad derriere against my lap, she asked, "Do I seem mad to you, or do I seem like a wife anxious to reward her husband for always taking care of her?"

Rewarding she was.

~~~

After several rather invasive pelvic examinations and other assorted tests, Samantha's gynecologist explained his findings.

The endometrium of Samantha's uterus had become, for lack of a better term, 'hyperactive'. This is why her menstrual flows had increased so drastically. He told us that there were some medications she could try, but based upon her inability to get pregnant, we might want to consider Samantha having an endometrial ablation. Another option was for her to have a hysterectomy.

Samantha researched the options that her doctor had provided and decided to have the endometrial ablation procedure, coupled with hormones before having to resort to a hysterectomy. She was able to schedule the procedure to be performed in her doctor's office on a Friday afternoon, which would allow her the weekend at home to recover.

I was thankful that it started raining while Samantha was undergoing the procedure. The rain wouldn't impact the procedure in the slightest, but it was forecast to last through the weekend, which would help me to keep Samantha in the house and relaxing rather than her wanting to work outside. I also knew that while she wouldn't need to be bed-ridden, she would stay in bed with me as long as I was there.

She had the expected cramps and more frequent need to urinate after the procedure, but those lasted less than twenty-four hours. By Sunday morning, she had cabin fever and insisted that we go someplace. The place she selected surprised me. It was a store that sold water features and supplies.

Going from maintaining three acres with over two hundred trees to ten acres with only three trees sounds like it wouldn't be too difficult. Unfortunately, we traded being knee-deep in leaves nine months out of the year to being waist high in alfalfa the same amount of time. We had to buy a John Deere lawn tractor immediately after the first of the year and use it at least every other weekend to keep the ten acres of grass under control. It was dirty, dusty, and time-consuming to mow all of the land, but Samantha would frequently beat me to it, leaving me to do perform other landscaping tasks.

Samantha selected the bushes and plants that she wanted to go in front of our house, so I cleared out areas for planters and augmented the existing top layer with silt and clay to create a sandy loam suitable for sustaining plant life. It would take a while for the plants to mature to the point where they would fill in the planters and look decent, but I wasn't in any rush.

Samantha on the other hand wanted to see a more established appearance in our house much faster. To that end, she was now suggesting that we build a water garden, complete with lily pads, various water features, and possibly even some Koi.

After visiting the local store that Sunday, I did a little research and told her that I thought that I could design and built something that she would like without us having to hire someone to do it for us. As long as she was patient, and let me work on it as my schedule permitted, I told her that I would be happy to give her the water garden that she wanted, and she agreed.

Over the next few months, I would spend a few hours each day that I was home working on Samantha's water garden. I would dig a little each day, filling a few wheelbarrows with dirt and spreading it around the ten acres so that I didn't have just one big pile of it to deal with.

Samantha's interest in the water garden, along with almost everything else, was taking a backseat to her focus on her new role at work. She was going in earlier and staying later specifically to allow her to keep supporting her project activity yet still have an hour or two each day to spend with the curriculum developer.

I was as supportive of her as ever, even buying her a computer for our home that allowed her to spend six to eight hours each weekend working on her projects so that she could keep up with everything. I had dinner ready for her when she came home every night and tried to find every little task or chore that I could relieve her of to lessen her burdens.

Most of my efforts were appreciated, but not all of them. Samantha gave me the silent treatment for an entire weekend because I had gone to a barber to get my hair cut instead of asking her to do it. She had been too focused on work to notice my hair getting too long, and I knew that she had brought work home for the weekend, so I truly thought that I was being considerate of her, but she apparently felt differently.

The hormone treatments were also presenting Samantha with challenges that I was only mildly of. These included a decrease in her sex drive, radical fluctuations in her weight, feelings of anxiety and irritation, in addition to an increased sensitivity to heat or cold. She was working with her doctor to find the right balance for her, but they hadn't found it yet.

This one Tuesday morning, Samantha was out of the house and on her way to work before dawn. I took a shower and got dressed while waiting for the sun to be fully up. I was planning to lay the rubber liner for the water garden into the completed hole that afternoon, so I took my coffee outside with me to examine the shape and condition of the hole while I decided which direction I would roll the liner when the time came.

I was walking around the hole, drinking my coffee when I got too close to the edge. The side caved in and my right leg fell into the three-foot deep hole. My left leg remained on the surface, bent at the knee but my right leg was straight as my foot hit the hard clay bottom of the hole. I knew immediately from the excruciating pain that I did something to my foot and ankle.

Pulling myself out of the hole, I tried putting weight onto my right foot and knew that it would not be possible. I hopped on my left foot to my truck and climbed onto the driver's seat. I knew that I would not be able to use my right foot to drive, but fortunately, my truck had an automatic transmission and the rural country roads in the area wouldn't have much traffic on them for me to contend with. I started my truck, put it in gear, and proceeded to drive the seven miles to the nearest little town.

These small communities typically could not support a full-time doctor, but one local general practitioner had established several "circuit clinics" that he would make the rounds to on a scheduled basis. I was fortunate that Dr. Currier was in my local clinic that morning, so I hopped in to have him check my foot.

As soon as he saw me hopping in, Dr. Currier said, "Wow. Either you broke something or you have the worst sprain I have ever seen. We need to get an x-ray of that."

I plopped down onto a chair in the waiting room and said, "Okay, go ahead."

"We don't have x-ray equipment here," Dr. Currier explained. "You'll need to go to the hospital in Seguin. Here, I think I have a cane that you can use to help you..."

I accepted the offered cane and hopped back to my truck. I drove the twenty-six miles to Seguin and found the local hospital. Of course, the radiology department was in the far back of the hospital, but I was able to hop and shuffle there on my own. As soon as they had finished with the x-rays, I headed back to the clinic.

Dr. Currier was waiting for me when I returned. He said, "The radiologist called and said that you have broken your calcaneus or your heel bone. You'll probably need surgery."

"Great," I said. "How long will that take? I had a trip to New York scheduled for next week."

Dr. Currier got me into an examination room and told me to give him a few minutes to make some phone calls. When he returned, he said, "I called an orthopedic surgeon who works out of the hospital in Seguin. He took a look at your x-rays and feels that the fracture to your calcaneus isn't bad enough to require surgery, but he won't be able to cast it or anything until the swelling goes down some. I'm going to put you in a splint to help support your injury while allowing the swelling to subside, then you should be able to get with the orthopedist by the end of this week."