Just journaling a little. Something that has been on my mind recently is my illness. I have chronic illness that just makes everyday life a general pain in the neck. I’ve never liked how H treats me when I get really sick. I call it nursing me to death, but it’s really pestering. He won’t leave me alone when I’m seriously sick, he just hovers nearby griping at me to do anything other than what I am doing. If I’m sleepy he thinks I should up doing something. If I’m up and about, he thinks I should be in bed. If I’m eating, I shouldn’t. If I’m on medication, he bugs me about weaning myself off. If I don’t want to take my medication he lectures me about how I need it. I can’t get any rest from his constant commentary of what I need to be doing that I’m not. I once begged my boss to let me come into work when I had a heart attack scare, because my H was worrying over me so much that the office was the only place I could go that H wouldn’t bother me. (BTW, it wasn’t a heart attack.)
I hate arguing with my H about my health. He always thinks he knows better what I need, and I’m the one who deals with the symptoms 24-7… and then there’s the part about how it’s my life.
I remember when my first husband was dying of cancer and we would disagree about what treatment he should have, but ultimately I let him decide because it was his life and I felt very strongly that he should live and die on his own terms. I still feel very strongly about this. IMO, everyone of us has the basic right to decide how and whether to pursue treatment for terminal diseases.
So getting back to my sitch, many of the symptoms of my current illness mimic a form of cancer that I am more likely to get because of my illness. I’m 95% sure I don’t have cancer, and I know my doctor is keeping an eye on it, because he asks all the right questions about my symptoms. Nonetheless, being constantly on the lookout for signs of cancer does make one think about what one would do if one had cancer. Of course it would depend upon my prognosis, but I am not one of those people who thinks I would want treatment no matter what. I would want to weigh out my life expectancy against the quality of my life; and I know my current H would be desperate to “save my life” no matter what I had to endure. It really bugs me that if I ever got that sick, I would have to argue with him just so that I could enjoy what was left of my life and die with some dignity. He doesn’t care about my dignity or my pain.
Of course that seems like an assumption, so I threw a hypothetical question at him one day last month. I asked him “If I had cancer, and I didn’t want to treat it, would you argue with me about it.” His response was “That’s crazy. You’d have to have treatment.” So I said, “but if I was really sick and I didn’t want to spend my last days taking drugs or hanging around hospitals, would you really argue with me about it?” His answer was that of course he would argue with me about it. I explained to him that I wouldn’t want to spend my last days arguing about it either. He just dismissed me, per usual. So it’s confirmed that I can’t even trust him to respect my wishes when I'm dying.
