Quote:

What areas of your relationship might it be helpful to "take off your blinders", and see things from a different perspective?


I'm guilty of having Blinders when it comes to trying to accomplish goals...

without thinking about it I'm one
who'll just do what needs to be done
& sometimes that leads to total complete focus being on the goal
& forgetting about the people who matter most...
my family...
althou it's for them that i'm throwing myself into what ever project that I'm working on...

althou I've not left or abandoned my family physically
i'm sure that to them especially my husband
it may have appeared that way (abandoned),

because I'll be so exhausted that I'd be bitchy
or fall out & crash for a few hours
only to get up & work some more on the project at hand...

even with his illness I treated it like any other project & do research on it
& be on the phone for 8 hrs a day sometimes
& then when he got home from work I'd try to tell him about what I'd did & found out & who I called
& instead of getting positive feedback from him

he didn't want to deal with it
so I just threw myself more into more research
so that I could get him well again
so he'd be back to being the fun happy guy I use to know
& that just didn't happen

instead he ended up with a diabetes diagnosis
that he couldn't deal with
& I missed the fact that he was having a real hard time with it
& just kept with my "nursing" attitude...
get the work done, keep calm, no matter what...
show no emotion to the patient...

it was my son who pointed out that one day when he was REALLY ILL from possible food poisioning
& was actually scaring me as I was trying to be calm & figure out what was wrong with him
by asking 101 questions
& talking of the work that needed to be done that day...

Son said that he was sitting there thinking that
"I'm going to die on this toilet & she's only talking about what did I eat & what we've got to do today"
he had no idea that inside I was panicing as to
HOW I was going to get him into the car
so I could get him to the proper hospital
(18 yr old - almost 6' tall & I've only got 1 good arm to work with)...

my outside appearance was calm, cool & non-chalant as if this was a common ocurrance...
I showed no sign of the panic which I really was feeling

Hubby most likely felt the same
& that opened up the EA for the OWhore
which lead to the PA after he left to go "back to the womb"

I wish I could turn back the hands of time there,
but can't
I don't know how to turn off the "nursing attitude"
but I wish that hubby could at least
look at things from my stand point...

my "nursing attitude" saved his eye sight back in 1994
when I got on the phone
& BITCHED at the Doc to see us immediately after lunch because hubby DID NOT have PINK EYE!

the eye surgeron who we ended up going to later
in the same day said
"THANK GOD you DID NOT take NO for an answer...
HE WOULD HAVE BLINDED PERMANETLY in that eye!"

The attitude does serve a purpose...
even in our car accident
I was more badly hurt than him but I was trying to get the 1st aide kit & not panicing...

but like Son who asked about my attiude after the crisis was over
He should have said some thing about feeling neglected...
getting meds taken on schedule
& administering 1st aide is not a job which can be done always in the most "caring loving" manner...
when time is of the essence,
orders many times need to be barked out
(Son didn't realise that he was a bit incohertant at the time)
& when a patient isn't following orders
it's not a time for sweetness
but simple matter of fact take these now
because u need them to get well...

maybe for the meds I should've been a bit more understanding but with a sugar reading of almost 600!
well it was not a time for me to be sweet
I had visions of him being dead next to me that nite!

A few nites after that
I woke up & he wasn't moving & was cold...

I thought that he had died!
until I managed to start turning him over
& he finally breathed!

You don't know how badly that freaked me out,
but I didn't tell him about until
a few days before he left
& then in an email afterwards
because I knew that he'd turned a deaf ear to what I said that nite I told him...

I'm trying to see things from his point of view but haven't yet been able to really see it...
he's not logical right now since he's full blown MLC...

I'm still trying to figure out how I can curb the "nursing attitude" but can't figure that one out yet either

Once I did my research on his diseases
there were many things which I no longer got upset with him about
I discovered that they were a result of either the disease or the meds which he was on,
being tired & sleeping so long,
not performing in the bedroom the greatest
(never complained verbally but maybe body language gave me away?)
the moodiness...

also symptoms of Depression & MLC,
which I didn't know to even look for at the time!
Then the increase of drinking & hangging out which only added to the health problems...
but he didn't want to see it that way...

can't go back & change things but how do I NOW go Forward?

I mean I can try to be not so focused on projects when I get doing them
& try to do them when he's not around...

but how to change the nursing attitude?
which I think really ended up hurting his feelings
& I didn't mean to that's for sure!?