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#2900854 07/28/20 09:43 PM
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Last thread: https://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2893688&page=1

Naming my thread this time so we all will be reminded to hum along with Gloria Gaynor as we pass through 2020. wink

New drama on the WW2 illicit romance front (CMM thinks it would make a good premise for a novel).

I believe I have identified the man who cheated with my father's first wife. I have found birth record and an enlistment record that seems to match him (name including middle initial and "jr", plausible age just 3 years older than her, and prior occupation as a telegraph operator which would square with him being a warrant officer teaching the signal corps. in New Orleans during the war, as per his letters.) If this is indeed him, then he also got married in New Orleans in September of 1943.

Now as you may remember, two of the letters that I have were written by him to his lover in July 1943. Flirting, talking about strolling the waterfront after he saw her, and talking about his girlfriend being in Washington and says "I wouldn't want her to know I was going to marry someone else - I suspect she thinks things will be patched up". He also says "darling. I've had plenty of time to think about it and don't you think I know what I want?"

Sounds like a guy who still wanted her to leave my dad and go with him - even though she was 7 months pregnant with my father's child (at least my dad believed the second one was his, even though he read these letters, so I'm guessing when she got pregnant the second time they did not live near this guy). And yet he gets married at the end of September just two days after my half-brother was born. DRAMA!

Sounds like my father's wife broke it off with him - or the reality of her having a child with my dad finally hit him - and he went ahead and "patched things up" with the Washington girlfriend. Which would explain why he wasn't available to marry her when my father divorced her.

He doesn't appear to have died in the war either - he lived until 1977 and died in San Diego. (Lots of ex military here).

Fascinating. Hard to imagine what she was thinking. My dad, btw, was charismatic, extroverted, fun, good looking, smart, hard-working. Nothing about his life with my mother would suggest that he would have been a bad husband to his first wife in any really significant way.

kml #2900891 07/29/20 12:28 PM
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Originally Posted by kml
Fascinating. Hard to imagine what she was thinking. My dad, btw, was charismatic, extroverted, fun, good looking, smart, hard-working. Nothing about his life with my mother would suggest that he would have been a bad husband to his first wife in any really significant way.
Personally I believe that in many cases that the person who cheats has a decent spouse at home. One of the reasons they feel confident enough to go a-wandering is that they know that the home fires are well tended.

If the 1/2 dozen or so cheating spouses I personally know, I can only think of 2 where they were married to a jerk.

I have a hard time believing that it's a "thing" but I understand that there's a whole sub-culture of "predatory" people looking for happily married spouses to poach. An acquaintance of mine once said that if he were ever going to cheat on his wife that he would pick a married woman because she would have too much to lose to get attached. On the other hand I've heard of women targeting men who seem to be stable, good providers.

Ah life's mysteries.


On BD
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T27, M26
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BD-9-Mar-16
D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18
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But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
kml #2900912 07/29/20 04:04 PM
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I don't think this guy was that kind of predatory person (although perhaps my father's first wife was. it's entirely possible that she only married my father for her green card but misled him into thinking she was really in love with him in order to get it. ) The letters from the lover make it clear he's really besotted with her and would like for her to leave my father and marry him. She may just have been someone who wanted to have her cake and eat it too. Maybe she led the lover on making him think she might leave my father when she had no intention of doing so. Maybe she just needed to stay longer with my father until she got her citizenship (I have no idea how it worked in the 1940's, I think today you have to be married at least five years and any breakup in the relationship sooner than that would trigger suspicions that it was a fake marriage.)

kml #2900914 07/29/20 04:05 PM
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Also it's interesting that he avoids actually saying my father's name in the letters - presumably out of guilt. He calls him "what's his name" or "that man'. I guess if you're going to cheat with a man's wife it's too real if you acknowledge the husband as a person with a name.

kml #2900926 07/29/20 07:09 PM
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Apparently a new act regarding naturalization was enacted in October of 1940, we are trying to find out the actual wedding date of my dad and his first wife, perhaps they rushed to get married before that act because it was easier before to become a citizen through marriage?

kml #2900966 07/30/20 04:02 PM
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I have also found that OM divorced his wife after 11 years of marriage, no children. Poor woman - she may never have known that she married a man who was in love with someone else.

kml #2901278 08/03/20 07:20 PM
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Very interesting stuff, kml. I've been following along, but haven't commented because what could I possibly say, but it is interesting for sure.


Me 52, H53
Bomb drop 9/29/2014
Divorce from XH final 12/17/2014
Marriage #2 12/31/2019
5 adult (step)daughters (3 from XH's first marriage, 2 from current H's previous relationships)
6 grandkids
kml #2901297 08/03/20 11:09 PM
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Yeah it's quite fascinating. But then, it's very abstract to me. I can't begin to guess what my half-brother's reaction to finding out would be, which is why we are approaching it very cautiously and trying to find out a little more info first.

kml #2901423 08/05/20 08:41 PM
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Can I just vent a little bit today? About my fellow physicians?

Mind you - most physicians start with the best of intentions, are very intelligent, and being a doctor is hard. Especially today when so many work in managed care and have to see too many patients in too little time - burnout is a serious problem for them. I get it.

Nonetheless - in the last 15 years it seems like I have witnessed a rise in stupid doctoring that I really didn't see in my earlier years as a physician. So much so it makes me wonder sometimes what they are teaching in medical school these days!

My latest experience - I saw a young friend of my middle son's (for free because he doesn't have the money to see me). He has absolutely classic symptoms for a rare (1 in 5,000 people) autoimmune neurological disease. It's something we ALL learned about in medical school (because the mechanism was understood even when I went to school, and it's a kinda cool disorder to study because it demonstrates some basic principles about nerves and synapses and how they work).

He belongs to a large staff-model HMO which generally provides good care and is one of the main providers in our area. He has seen his neurologist (who treats him for migraines) and has seen not one but two neuro-opthalmology specialists (because the presenting symptoms often involves the eyes). He had a single antibody test to rule out this rare disease. (He also had a brain MRI which was normal).

Now granted this is rare - I knew one woman socially who had it 20 years ago and think I might have seen a case in medical school - that's it. And I'm certainly not up to date on the latest info so I did spend a little bit of time looking up current recommendations. But even a cursory search shows that he is being completely mishandled by his doctors.

1) The antibody test he had is positive in 85% of cases. But of the remaining 15%, 1/2 have a different antibody. This test should routinely be done if the first test is negative (Labcorp even has a test that is set up to automatically do the second test if the first is normal). Yet none of his physicians recommended it nor would they order it. They simply insisted he didn't have it because the first antibody test was negative.

2) One of the doctors told him he couldn't have the disease because he wasn't female (most cases in his younger age group are female). Well - he's a transgender man who was born female and it's all over his chart! Plus things like that are never absolute.

3) One doctor told him he couldn't have it because his eye drifts inward instead of outward (even though it has also gone outwards on occasion and the general problem is caused by muscle weakness which can affect ANY of the muscles around the eyeball).

4) That same doctor told him it must be a problem inside the eye socket - even though he also has facial muscle weakness, difficulty swallowing and weakness in his arms! Please tell me how a mechanical problem in the eye socket is going to cause all those other symptoms?

5) There is an old bedside test for this disease (which is in all the medical textbooks and on the websites for this disease) called the Ice Pack Test. The muscles become weak on repeated use. A droopy eyelid can be tested by putting an ice pack on the area for 3-5 minutes and seeing if the symptom resolves. (This is just a temporary fix but a diagnostic test that relies on the fact that a particular enzyme is slowed in the cold, improving nerve transmission). So, I had him do some facial exercises to wear his muscles out, and we were able to produce the one-sided facial drooping and turning inward of his left eye. Then he put an ice pack on his face for 3-4 minutes and it all went back to normal. He took photos before and after which clearly demonstrate the change. (Really, they could be textbook illustrations). He sends them to his most recent neuro-opthalmologist who denies they have any relevance but finally agrees to send him to the neurologist who treats most of the patients with this disorder.

Honestly, this case should not be hard. The onset of symptoms, the pattern of symptoms, the history, the positive Ice Pack Test - really you could pretty much diagnose it clinically even without antibody tests or an EMG (which is the other indicated test). There's really not another good explanation for all these symptoms than this one rare disease. And the only thing that's changed since I went to medical school in the 80's is that there are more antibody tests for the rarer forms - treatments really haven't changed in all that time.

I'm smart but I don't have any specialized knowledge about this disease, only what I learned in medical school and what I could easily learn now by reading just a few things. ANY doctor SHOULD be able to do this. Simply listen to the patient, read a little bit, and do a good physical exam. WHY IS THIS SO F-ING HARD???????

Grrrrr. I'm glad he has me in his corner. I wrote a detailed letter about his diagnosis that I hope will light a fire under the doctors there. (Sometimes when an outside doctor documents in writing the need for certain tests they will do them because of medicolegal liability). But none of this should have been necessary. Even if his primary care doctor couldn't make the diagnosis, he saw THREE specialists in neurology who should have been much more familiar with the workup and diagnosis than I am.

Ok - rant over. I just had to vent. Any of you struggling with stupid doctoring, I feel for you. Keep advocating for yourself.

kml #2901457 08/06/20 02:25 PM
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Originally Posted by kml
Sometimes when an outside doctor documents in writing the need for certain tests they will do them because of medicolegal liability
LOL - This is the case in any environment.

We had an issue with tightening the caps on a particular type of container. For years. Because we didn't have the right wrench. The operator ended up using a hammer to tighten the cap which is - ahem - not ideal. We don't get these containers in very often but when we do there are always concerns about ensuring the caps are properly seated.

When I came on the scene I got an ear-full from the operator about this. He was very frustrated. So I made some noise. One of the engineers (yep - an actual engineer) took a picture to show that the wrench we had for similar caps wasn't the right size.

So - the next time these showed up to be filled, I went down to the plant, made a cardboard template and from that a set of CAD drawings on exactly how a new wrench (which I was assured maintenance could make) needed to be set up and sent that over to them. The next day I got some grumbling in an email from maintenance about buying a new wrench with poor links to wrenches that were the wrong ones.

I checked with the operator a day or so later and it seems that maintenance went out, cut some extra notches in the wrench he already had, bent the arms so that it could be used on these containers and it was all good. An easy fix that probably only took about an hour or so.

I figured that it took me - as the "outsider" pointing out that "hey - we can do better" to get them to do their job - which should have been done about 5 years ago.

I had no issue with the fact that the effort I took to make my template etc was all "wasted" - it got the right people off their butts and doing their jobs. So - not wasted at all.


On BD
H52, W50
T27, M26
S21, D23
BD-9-Mar-16
D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18
I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good.
But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
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