I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!

If someone told me three weeks ago that I would spend my birthday with my husband, Dorian, I would of cried tears of joy. Today, I did just that. The last 6 weeks have been the hardest of my life. On September 22nd, my world came crashing down. I received a phone call that Dorian was in an accident. He had fallen while skateboarding with our dog, Artie, and landed on his head. When I arrived at the hospital he was walking and talking, but the CAT-scan revealed bleeding in his brain. I watched as they evaluated his condition. During the next hour, it worsened. Doctors put him in a coma to allow for his brain to swell. Three days later, they informed me that they needed to remove his skull to make room for additional swelling. Over the next 7 days, the pressure inside Dorian's head kept him in critical condition.

I spent every day next to him, reading, singing, and applying Burt's Bees to his chapped lips. The doctors told us that if Dorian did wake up, he may not be the man we once knew. Eventually, the pressure inside his head went down. He awoke from the coma shortly after with the same personality, but a bit confused. I was so relieved that he was the man I knew, the same man that I met 18 years ago at a house party in Indialantic, Florida. He was the same man I married 16 years later. Of course, a full recovery meant a long, hard period of rehab. He was admitted into a hospital and started rehab the following day. Amazingly, Dorian, being the strong man he is, shocked us when after a week of treatment was granted a discharge. And, even though we still are on the long, arduous road to full recovery, with more surgeries and outpatient rehab along the way, we are able to spend our birthdays together. We celebrated his 33rd on October 30th and mine on November 2nd. On his birthday, I couldn't help but to repeat the same thing I whispered over and over to him when he was in a coma: I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!