Tina up close and personal for the first time.

My first brave moment came the day after thanksgiving in 2009. The week before was a little different, Tina had came out and visited for a while. I was working on the deer figures that we put out every year. She didn't say anything to me and only stayed for about 10 minutes. The next day my brave moment went down. I was having issues with my blood pressure and my doctor told me that it was not much to worry about. I remember after I would eat my blood pressure would go up. I didn't have a way to check it but I would feel funny and that is how I assumed my BP was high. I researched the issue but never found a reasonable way to bring BP back to normal. Remember I thought Tina was a nurse at the time so..... She came out to look at our Christmas decorations and that was my moment. I walked outside, Brent was busy fixing burnt out strands of lights and I had went to help him although I felt bad due to my BP being up so high. I walked outside and I heard voices from the road and I knew someone else was out there. I went up to Tina who was standing next to Vince admiring the light display, I asked flat out, "What is the best way to reduce sodium in your blood" Tina said. "Honey, drink lots of water because sodium passes through your kidneys and bladder and then ends up as waist material." I continued talking to her but switched the conversation to our Christmas decorations. She told me that they were beautiful and that she loved seeing Christmas lights.

We have been putting up Christmas decorations as long as I can remember. We were always in competition with old Mrs. Workman. We wanted to have a bigger and better Christmas display than she did. Tina would stand in the road and look at the lights for hours on 

end. The next day we had went Christmas shopping and while we were gone Tina had came out to visit with Vince. We got back home kinda late and walked through the door and she was sitting there using the computer. I was in a good mood and felt like talking that day. I struck up a conversation about my health issues, I wanted to eat more left overs but I was debating if I should have or not. That is when Tina asked what had happened for me to have high blood pressure. I told her about my heart attack back on Feb, 15 2009. That is when she told me about her heart attack due to overdose of pain killers. Our heart issues connected us right then and we had an entire conversation about how and why we both had gotten sick. I didn't think much about the overdose at that point. I had never been exposed to drug use in an abusive way. I didn't know she had a problem with pain killers, in fact I didn't know much about my own addictions. To make her feel not so alone I told her that I was a food addict. She was playing a game on the computer and I could hear the faint sound of the game. I couldn't see the screen though. The game broke my concentration and I asked what she was playing. She told me she was playing Uno on Facebook. I didn't even know what Facebook was at that time, I had heard about it but never checked into it. I walked around to look at the game and the new craze of Facebook. I told her I wanted to open an account to play some of the games. She told me to play a round for her because she wanted more watergate salad. I learned that night that she was not shy at all and was very true to herself. After everyone had went to bed Tina told me the story of see her grandmother when she Overdosed the first time. I was confused and so she broke it all down for me. She told me that she overdosed twice. One recent that she was in the process of recovering from and getting clean and the first one a while before that. She told me that during her first overdoes she saw a bright light and she went toward it. She said her grandmother was standing there dressed in a white robe. Her grandmother spoke to her and then told her to go back that it was not her time. Tina loved her grandmother very much and often talked about her. Then Tina told me about her second overdose, she said that she saw complete darkness the second time around. She told me she was afraid that she was not living her life right. I was raised in a very christian home, I had attended church since I could remember. I talked to her about God, Jesus and the bible and how to live to the best of your ability. She felt a lot better after our little talk.

I went to bed with a smile on my face. I knew we connected but I was sure in for a treat. We grew from that moment on, we never stopped growing.