marriage and divorce

PERSONAL NARRATIVE

PERSONAL NARRATIVES

Life before Marriage

Pain had become an integral part of my life since childhood . Not that much time has elapsed since then . So many incidents have taken place in the days of childhood and adolescence , the life rapidly underwent such painful transformations , so profoundly I forgot the meaning of happiness , that the years before marriage comes as not with separate memories but with one combined feeling of pain

My mother was diagnosed with gastric carcinoma when I was three years old . I have but a blur

and unpleasant memory of further days . My mother 's declining health had greatly jeopardized the stability of our family that was crucially dependent on her income in a tightly controlled Romanian economy . Thus mother had to fight against her disease as well as financial hardship and prospective threats to our secure survival . Fortunately , the medical care allowed her to continue her work . The presence of mother was in itself a force to save the family from disintegrating

However in 1992 , my mother 's health again deteriorated and we learned that In she had a hepatobiliary colocarcinoma with metastases in the peritoneum , a condition beyond surgical treatment . She was , however helped by palliative radiation treatment that added quality time to her remaining years . My mother 's disease had brought me in close contact with fundamentals of radiation therapy and it had deeply motivated me to take up a career in radiation oncology dosimetry

However Romania did not offer me much opportunity to explore opportunities in this field and after my undergraduate program I was stifled for field knowledge and work

Here luck intervened once again for me and I got a lifetime opportunity to immigrate to the US through the green card lottery program . The initial years were difficult and the period from 1998 to 2001 marked survival against all odds . Leaving in New York had its own challenges and I was primarily concerned with paying my rents and tuition fees switching between odd jobs with hardly any relevance to my academic background and my field of interest

Those were troubled days again . As a single female , leaving without any support , any friends and relatives , my days were listless , depressed and aloof

In April 2001 , I was admitted in the hospital with a hyperthyroidism storm , a high morbidity diagnostic . The following days were the loneliest days of life , when I yearned for a human presence that I could depend upon . I was selected for an on job training dosimetery position with Pennsylvania Radiation Physics Associates (PRP ) in 2001 and left PRP as an assistant radiological physicist , certified as medical dosimetrist

My days with PRP marked the first really positive change in my life when I found reasons to look forward to life . Here I met Mihai , a childhood friend from Romaina . We were born in the same city , we grew up in the same block , we shared the same education , traditions and friends . Love happened naturally

Marriage

Mihai and I married...