It is springtime in 1967. I am three years old and I have juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Doctors in my small town of Opelousas, Louisiana can't diagnose my illness but they speculate that it is indeed JRA. My parents are devastated and the doctors tell them that they have done everything they possibly can to help me and prayers won't hurt. My older sister is called into my hospital room to tell me goodbye because the doctors don't expect me to live. They can't control my fevers. You will be taken on a journey of heartbreak and triumph as you witness this little girl's personal lifelong battle with arthritis.
IN A GOOD SPOT
My Lifelong Battle with Rheumatoid ArthritisBy SUZANNE BETH GUILBEAUXAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Suzanne Beth Guilbeaux
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-3341-5Chapter One
HERE COMES BETH
On top of the rich historic celebration all Americans share, Mr. And Mrs. Eddie John Guilbeaux of Opelousas, Louisiana, conceived and delivered an emotional connection to their young family's 1963 Fourth of July. On that patriotic day, their second child, Suzanne Beth, was born. She arrived a healthy little girl with cafe au lait skin, just like their precocious first child, Judy. That second child is me. Everyone calls me Beth.
Evelyn Joyce and Eddie John were hopeful and determined people. They envisioned the brightest of all possible futures for their daughters, as well as for the two sons that arrived a few short years later.
And why not have hope? They were a terrific couple, widely respected and admired in town. Young, well educated, independent, highly focused on their work as educators, grounded in their spiritual beliefs, and aided by strong extended families that were willing to extend support during any times of crisis. The odds were definitely in Evelyn and Eddie's favor.
But odds can be tricky, and luck is something that shifts too much to be a reliable foundation. I used to hear that someone who trusts in luck might ride to the casino in a $4,000 Chevy, then ride back home in a $250,000 Greyhound. Odds are not the foundation upon which to build anything of substance in life. Even at the temples built for her worship in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, Lady Luck is a pretty slippery character.
In the small towns and close-knit communities of south Louisiana, everyone knows everyone else, and there is at least one of everything: One movie theater, one hospital, one burger stand, and one good-working set of rules to live by. The people of Opelousas liked to keep things simple and predictable. What I mean is, my parents grew up as childhood friends, classmates from elementary school through high school. From the stories told in our family, I believe that it was love at first sight for Dad. Both were excellent students, and the teachers adored them. Eddie John was quite a handsome young man and Evelyn Joyce was simply gorgeous with long flowing hair, rich brown skin, a perfectly shaped body, with brains and talent to match, or even exceed, her physical charms. She was a wonderful singer, and he couldn't sing a lick, but a kindly high school music teacher put them next to each other in the choir. She could so plainly see the devotion in Eddie John's young eyes.
After high school, college distanced them for a time. He was off to Texas College, while she went to Southern University, completing a four-year program with honors in an astonishing two-and-a-half years. But fate sealed their destiny as husband and wife. When she was about to begin a career in elementary education, Eddie John could not bear the thought of another man having designs on his childhood sweetheart. So he proposed. Thus, a quickly-scheduled ceremony took place in Opelousas on December 2, 1956, before the Justice of the Peace. Why not a formal wedding? Well, they had been brought up in different churches, and in those days, families belonging to different denominations could feud for generations and be as stubborn about their beliefs as Satan himself.
But Eddie and Evelyn were guided by something more important and more powerful than any denomination, the eternal truth that "amor vincit omnia" – love conquers all. So it came as no surprise in the community that had watched them grow up when Evelyn Joyce and Eddie John were suddenly married.
There would be no honeymoon for these ardent newlyweds. Dad had to rush back to Texas College to complete his degree. After graduation in May of 1957, he and his bride began their life together in Louisiana. Their future seemed exceptionally bright. They first lived with Mother's parents, John and Berdie Aaron, while becoming established in their jobs.
The summer of `57, though, was spent in Houston, Texas, a city that would soon become highly familiar for this family. Dad could have taken the summer off, as so many teachers do, but he saw those three months as an opportunity to work other jobs and provide life's little extras for his family. At fifteen, he had begun working construction jobs with his uncle in Houston, and he continued his summer hard-hat tradition even through the summer after he had graduated from college.
Teaching offered Eddie and Evelyn a stable and morally sound lifestyle. Dad worked a combination of jobs: classroom teacher, coach, driver's education instructor, and referee for athletic events. Mother taught elementary school, which proved to be rewarding. Life was good, simple and predictable. Yes, things were rolling right along for this couple.
Mother and daddy soon decided that it was high time they started a family. Like everything else in their lives, that venture was successful. On July 14th of 1958, Judy Arnette Guilbeaux was born. She was the perfect first addition to this young family. Eddie and Evelyn, now parents, and as guided as ever by their ambition and dedication to make dreams a reality, built a home in 1959. Once again, life was simple, good, and predictable, just as the good folk of south Louisiana like to keep it.
After delivering their first child, the next matter on the agenda was finding a church home. Mother had been raised in a very religious household. She was the baby in a group of ten siblings, born to parents who were somewhat older than average, who had already established themselves as the owners of a farm. Mother lived very well and she was doted on by both her parents. She wanted for nothing, always had everything. My maternal grandfather was a deacon and Sunday School Director of a Baptist Church, while grandmother was the pianist and choir director. If my memory is correct, they served that same church for more than 60 years.
Daddy's family, too, was very religious. However, he was raised as a Catholic. The second of seven children, Dad sacrificed and shared with younger siblings. His parents owned a farm as well. Things were unusually counterweighted in his household concerning religion. While his sisters were raised in the Baptist faith and attended church with their mother, Eddie John and his brothers were raised Catholic and attended church with their dad. Now, this may be peculiar to some and ironic to others, but it worked out fine for this family. So my parents figured out a plan for their own home. A decision was made very early for the Guilbeaux children, both born and unborn. We would all be raised in the same church, under the same religion, and that religion would be Baptist.
Dad thought that best, because he felt that if anything unforeseeable ever happened to him, his children would be together in a spiritual way. While my parents discussed everything and agreed most of the time on everything, Sunday mornings always highlighted the one element in which they were of different minds. They often joked about their respective places of worship. Mother would comment that Dad's time spent in church was so short that by the time he got home, he had already forgotten what the Mass was about. Dad would say in turn that Mother sat in church so long that he could cook a 12-course meal, with time to spare, before she returned home.
The jokes gradually faded away, but the agreement about separate churches remained.
After five years of...
