Stories worse than yours

Who is the sickest?

Chapter one: Till death do us part.

Aaron and Bianca are going to get married. These are beautiful times. Obviously a grand bachelor party is organised for him, by his little brother. They go paintballing. Exactly one week before the wedding.

Not breaking any traditions, Aaron walks, hands up, gun down along the battle field twice so that his friends can blow the hell out of the ‘bachelor’. That’s the way it goes, they said and Aaron is happy they did not send him to the red light district wearing some bunny suit or whatever. He’s rather be bruised to the bone.

The week that follows is one with a load of stress about the wedding, but Aaron also starts to feel a little off. Just some pain in his back and he is really tired. He pushes it aside as ‘healthy tension’. Makes sense too. After the ‘big day’ all falls apart when the romantic wedding night turnes into a night with the bellowing of sirenes; he is urgently taken to the hospital. Aaron’s kidney burst.

The honeymoon is put off.

Bianca is sitting on the edge of his hospital bed instead of a beach chair.

And not just for a day. Day, weeks pass by before they know more. The kidney burst because of a blood clot that had slipped into it. Probably literally, during paintballing, they think. When, a little later in the hospital, his bloodvalues are checked, the blood clot suddenly seems illogical in the story. Aaron’s blood is actually really thin, they discover.

Months of medical eximanations follow.


Chapter two: This is not what I signed for?!

Aaron gets really frustrated because of the insecurity he’s living in. He has to quit his job because of the many examinations and loses a lot of confidence. Bianca’s is also going down with all the pressure. Soon they start having arguments daily. When Aaron returns from a night out with his friends, a little drunk, all hell breaks loose. “I would never have married you if I had known you would become this!” She screams. “So? What So?! Ill you mean?!” “In sickness and in health, remember!?!”, Aaron screams back at her. The next day Bianca left.

So they live apart for a while.

And then he is rushed to the hospital once again. Bianca’s called. She is after all his wife, thus the contact for the hospital. She comes to the hospital. Stoned from all the morfine Aaron starts mumbling to her. Like: “You are the salt on my egg!” to: “I hate the guts out of you, f*cking b*tch. This vague memory is also the last one he has of her.

The day after this event, Aaron makes up his mind. The divorce that follows costs him, besides a lot of money, loads of his scarse energy.

Another hospitalization follows. Traditionally he goes out to the Irish pub for a nice few beers the night before. Call it imbibing for hospitalization. On his way to the pub, Aaron cycles by the restaurant where he worked before he got ill. Suddenly he feels like inviting his old co-workers to join him. Heleen also joins - he always thought she was sympathetic! Four hours laters they are kissing beneath the Martini tower in Groningen.

A couple of months in love later the diagnose follows. Aaron has an early form of cancer. His thin blood was a symptom of a starting leukemia. If he wouldn’t have gotten that blood clot in his kidney, it would probably not have discovered on time and Aaron would probably have gotten the real deal leukemia. Could have been very very different.

Luckily, this form of cancer is relatively easy to treat. With a light chemo therapy treatment and a stemcelltransplant. His new love does not leave his side. And Aaron is going through everything with a renewed positive force. It’s almost like an American movie with balloons to the bed, fruitbaskets on the nightstand and butterflies in the belly.

Aaron is healthy again, back to work, and is getting married for the second time... With Heleen. He did not forget about how she pulled him through this horrible time. How she has supported him unconditionally. The honeymoon is going to be twice the trip he would have made with Bianca. He asked his brother to buy him a bunnysuit for the bachelor night...

The one that had two

Chapter one: Roger in the sun on the terrace.

Look. That’s Roger. With a friend. And a friend of that friend, that Roger does not know yet, joins them. Her name is Hanneke. Hanneke and Roger hit it off and she stays for a second, third and fourth drink. She tells Roger she just broke up with her boyfriend, after a three year during relationship.

The next day they become friends on Facebook -wooohooo- and he even sends her a private message. A week after that he bumps into her again at the same terrace. They have some drinks, go out later that night and kiss for the first time. Woooohooo!!

From that point onwards they meet once or twice a week. Roger works at  his home on Fridays. Coincidentally that also accounts for Hanneke. So on those days he joins her to work at her place. In her house are loads of photo’s from her ex, but he doesn’t find that weird, as they had been together for over three years. His bicycle is also still there. Possible. Right?!

Besides Fridays he also spends some weekends at her place, because her house is so much more cosy than his typical bachelor pad is. They also go to Rome for a super romantic weekend break.

As a souvenir he decides to drop by to deliver a card. A picture of them on the Spanish Stairs. While he is rumbling with her mailbox de door suddenly opens. It’s Hanneke’s ex. Ehrm... Roger quickly makes up an excuse and tells him he’s at the wrong place. Hanneke later explains that the was there to pick up some of the stuff he had left behind. It was only over since a couple of weeks. Possible. Right?!

Chapter two: Roger in her boyfriend’s shadow

On a night Roger feels like ‘beer and tities’. So he calls Hanneke. She is in mood herself she says, but she’s at a party. However, Roger is already on his bicycle and is almost at her place. Where the lights are on. In her house. Weird. He rings the doorbell.

To his surprise mr Ex opens the door again. He asks him whether he came to the wrong place again? Roger asks him what he’s doing in Hanneke’s house.
To which mr Ex answers quite surprised: “This is my house, I bought this three years ago and Hanneke moved in half a year ago”. “But who the hell are you”?

Ouch

“Ehrm, I have been going out with Hanneke for over four months now”. Aah. Because both are equally surprised, none of them get angry with eachother.

Roger tells him about the weekend in Rome and about the weekends that he has spend in his apartment. It appears that mr Ex, eh, Hanneke’s boyfriend had been away with colleagues or friends. This is how they, still at the front door, slowly find out the truth.

Mr Ex, eh, Hanneke’s boyfriend, decides to call Hanneke. On the speer. “Hi, I’m standing here, with Roger, we know everything. Why don’t you come home”.

Five minutes later she is there.
“Now I lost everything”
And that’s the way it is.

How could Roger have been so naive? When he came to work at her place on Fridays, her boyfriend would leave the house at 8:00 am and came back at 7:00 pm. He had often asked whether he could stay over for diner, but that was never possible. Other times he had arrangements with friends and left around that time. It was fridaynight right? He was not allowed to kiss her openly or drop by spontaneously. All pictures were still in the house. Roger spent entire weekends in the house there her boyfriend also lived. But never did he notice anything, no toothbrush, no coat, no shoes. If he had opened the wardrobe he would have seen all his clothes. But after all he was in someone else’s house, so he didn’t do that.

Afterwards you can say that there were many signs. But as Johan Cruijff always says: “You’ll start seeing it when you notice it”.