Mary Ann Nation, CareGiver

Mary Ann & Harlan Nation

I was the oldest of eight and I met Harlan just really by chance one day and we were married about a year later.

We had three babies real quick and they were our whole life and Harlan was there every night and his first and last thought of the end and beginning of each day was his kids. We put the three of them through college and they all got married and was ready to begin their new lives and we thought, now, it's time for us. We wanted to do all the things that you think you're going to do. We're going to travel, we're going to spend money on us, we're going to go where we want and do what we want and eat out where we want.

I came home from work one day and he thought he was having a stroke. I asked him why he didn't go to the hospital, he didn't know where the hospital was and I asked him why he didn't call me at work and he couldn't remember where I worked. He just knew that this was home and that I would be there pretty soon. And it started from there.

We were told that he had a tumor and he went in, they wanted to wait a while to see if it would grow, or move in direction, or anything. He started having really bad seizures and getting very violent and we rushed him to the hospital and they ended up doing surgery on him and told us that it was not a tumor and, you know, we thought that that was really good news, and it wasn't.

Next: Not good news