The lake's significance ...

Summer of 2009 was going great. My husband and I had been married for 6 years, were living our dream in a small mountainside wine village in Germany, and had the most beautiful house and smartest dog. Things were great.

Or were they?

I had been going back to school for a year that June. I was taking a U.S. History and an ethics class. It was going superbly as I was on the Dean's List, and doing extremely well with an almost perfect GPA. So, of course my husband wanted to distract me on a beautiful summer day by stating "We're going to the lake."

There's this little man-made lake in the mountains behind our house that we had discovered the summer before, and were frequenting weekly the summer of 2009. It may have taken 40 minutes to get there on one lane roads, but it was well worth the beautiful trip through the mountain country. We even had "dream" houses picked out along the way. Mine was a run down, mid-eighteenth century farm house that was overgrown near the famous Siegfried fountain (Wagner's Der Ring Das Nibelungen). My husband's was a modern marvel seated precariously on the side of a mountain that overlooked a valley that was regularly full of cows with tinkling bells.

I distinctly remember this particular trip to the lake in June because we took our dog, and I took my school books to study. It had been a good beginning to summer. Not too hot, beautiful blue skies almost every day, and little humidity. We got there and spread our blanket out on a little hill in front of the only dock on the lake. My husband threw the dog's ball for him, and I lay down to read my texts.

We'd been there maybe an hour when it clouded over where we were laying. I kept my sunglasses on though, and kept reading and highlighting, commenting now and then about Andrew Carnegie and the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. My husband had come to lay next to me and was munching out of a tub of grilled chicken strips and drinking a Capri-Sonne (Capri-Sun to you American folk).

I can remember what exactly prompted it, but I was hit by repeated blows of crushing pain in my right hand and arm. This was not unfamiliar; I'd been experiencing these types of pains for years, since approximately 2001 when I had a rather terrifying football accident. And yes, I know, girls don't play football for a reason. Don't remind me...

My husband, the dear that he is, gives me his typical helpless, concerned look and tries to console me. "Are you okay?" "Is there anything I can do?" Knowing both the answers every time he asks ... he still asks. He's scared. He's been scared since he met me and we started seriously dating because he was there for some of the worst experiences I've had.

We start to talk about needing to go back to the doctor, debating whether or not it's a good idea. We've been married 6 years and have seen twice as many doctors as years we've been married by now. He tells me I should go. I insist that if I go, we will never do another nerve test because it's not my nerves. He agrees. I say, in all these years, they have never once taken an X-ray. I say I am going to demand an X-Ray. He agrees.

We left the lake that day satisfied with the conclusion that we refused to put up with shoddy medical treatment or advice any longer. It was time we discovered that it wasn't all in my head.