Louis and I went thru many trials that would have caused many couples to break up or put a strain on their marriage.  These things only strengthened ours.  Louis's health started to decline in 1999.  He had been a diabetic for several years before we got married, but never really kept a good control over it.  He was grown and all I could do was encourage him to watch his diet.  However, I became a diabetic, too and neither of us really watched it like we should have.  Heck, we didn't even have a meter to check it on for the first five or six years we were married.  When he almost died in June of 1999, all of that changed.  He got a blister on his heel, did not eat right, did not keep his sugar down and he developed gas gangrene in his foot after developing osteomyelitis (infection in the bone for those who do not know).  When this happened, I went into guilt mode and panic mode.  I am a nurse and I should have been able to prevent this.  This started his downhill slide.  He never lost hope, even when his vision got so bad, he never looked at the glass as anything but half full.  He said that as long as he had me and I loved him nothing else mattered.  I guess the reason that I did not have anger when he died is because I used it all up before that time came.  He was in the hospital for a month and off work for three months.  His health never was the same after that and this ordeal, started his downward spiral with his kidneys.  His osteomyelitis is like cancer, it goes into remission and his did.  He got out of the hospital and we did his dressing changes at home for the next three years.  His foot never did heal and I knew that the osteomyelitis was still there.  In April 2001, he had to start applying for disability.  He got it with no problems because of his vision and his problem with his foot.  In December 2001, I became sick, having problems with my back and I had to file for disability.  He got his about the time I had to file for mine.  He almost died in 2002, because of his osteomyelitis coming back and lost his right foot because of this.  But it never slowed him down.  He accepted it without problems and barrelled ahead.  He built a w/c carrier to go on the back of our car, a 1997 mercury cougar that he bought me for Christmas of 1998.  He built this before he got his prosthesis.  He did not want to stay at home and this gave him some freedom.  After he got his prosthesis, he never even had to take therapy, he just started walking and off he went.  In July 2002, after my second back surgery, he was staying with me in the hospital and we experienced our first indication that something was not right with his kidneys, because his blood pressure pills built up in his system and he almost died.  In fact, he had an out of body experience.  But God did not take him, he gave him back to me.  All of this finally caught up with him, though, because in November of 2003, Louis went into full renal failure and congestive heart failure.  The doctor admitted him to the hospital and we all fully expected him to die in the next day or so.  But that was not to be.  Louis came home on Hospice because he was deathly afraid of needles and did not want dialysis.  He was on Hospice for 14 days, when I fell prostrate and begged God not to take him.  Louis came to himself and wanted to know about dialysis.  We looked it up on the internet and he decided to take it.  Both of his doctors were ecstatic.  He went in and got started the next day.  Once again God gave him back to me.  The only reason that Louis took dialysis was because of his love for me.  I had him for a year and a half, and that was a year and a half more than either of us expected.  During that time, we were together 24/7.  We shared everything, everyday, every hour, every minute, every second.  We were able to talk about when he died, what he wanted me to d0.  He made sure that all his affairs were in order, he told people bye and he made amends with everyone in his family.  He felt that God gave him this time to get his life in order.  He even went to Church until his health got too bad to sit thru it.  And his every thought was about me and how I would make it.  The day this man died, our town mourned his loss.  Our pastor went to the bank, which happened to be the bank that we used and told them that one of his church family had died at a local restuarant.  When they asked who it was, when he told them all of the women who worked their lost it.  You see while he was alive, he made friends everywhere he went and most of those he befriended were women.  I was not jealous because I knew who had his heart and I knew that was me.  God blessed us with an extra year and a half and we filled it full of living.