I feel totally betrayed by my husband. He gets so angry with me when I come home from doing chores and the "first thing you do is put pajamas on and lay down." He says I am weak minded and not to give in too the pain. He refuses to read anything about fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and the multitude of other symptoms that I have. I fell down some stairs in 1987. I injured my neck and knocked my pelvis and SI joint out of place. I had symptoms of a disc injury, but none could be found. 18 months later while I was at a Pain Clinic for four weeks they discovered the SI upslip. There was a lot of scar tissue around it and it had pulled my leg up shorter than the other one. They tried manipulation therapy, discussed surgery for fusion, a lot of other things. Finally decided the best thing to do was nothing. I was assigned a bunch of stretching excercises to do each day. Nothing helped the pain I was in constantly, my whole body hurts. My husband has chronic head pain. He has Cluster Headaches. After many years of suffering he found help at the Diamond head ache Clinic in Chicago. I read all I could find on headaches. We found ourselves in Chicago due to a Dr. I worked ER with who saw a TV show about Cluster headaches and Dr Diamond. He came around to my office and told me about it. He belived my husband had this type of headache. He had treated my husband in ER many times over that past year. Thank you Dr. Coleman, we now know exactly what to take for his head pain after about a year of trial and error.. My husband now tells me I am weak. If I am, it is due to my own Chronic pain and years of taking care of him, working full time as a Nursing Assistant and taking Respiratory Care Practitioner classes, raising two sons, working midnights to have evenings free for my sons and thier social life. During his illness my husband did not work, he drove trucks, the really big ones. He couldn't safely drive while screaming in pain. I supported us, paid for finishing our house we were building, made the car and insurance payments. Now I am on Disability also , and all he does is find fault with me. I get no support from him at all. I resent all the hours I spent massaging his scalp and neck muscles when he was screaming with the cluster head pain. He has sucked the life energy out of me.
Sandy,
"First I have to say u must be around my age since u have g-children, late 50's? Probably married at least 35 years? I just celecrated 37 and am 59.
It is amazing at times how selfish and immature a man can be! If you supported him all those years and he ACTUALLY knows what real pain is since he has experienced it I do not for the life of me understand how that attitude can be had!!! Have u confronted him head on about it? Have you, and I always hated doing this, thrown it up in his face? Sometimes it takes drastic measures to get where you need to be. I personally do not believe in couple therapy, but even if u do he sounds like the type that would never consider it.
I am dunbfounded by your post! I cannot relate to someone being that mean, tho I have seen it with friends. I do know if it was me, I would be gone, even if I had to stay at a motel till I had enough for a small studio, but I would never take that form of abuse, and that is what it basically is. I am sure you are still making him dinner and taking care of the house, but that is a differant story to him right? I really wish I could give you some positive advise, but besides leaving him or throwing him out, what other choices do you have but to con't to put up with it?
This is when I see how really blessed I am. There are many days I just want to eat my whole bottle of pills, don't want to wake up anymore just to live like this. I went from an attractive, career working woman to a disabled, deformed, in a wheelchair, can do not one physical thing with the exception of a little dusting and attempting to cook dinner, which my husband usually ends up helping me with. I am a total shut in because I am ashamed to be seen the way I look. If it was notfor the computer and the fact I have been a jewelry designer for 17 years I would be totally out of my mind.!!! I am the one that feels totally guilty for stealing my husbands life from him. He is 60, works construction, heavy labor and gets to come home, vacuum the house, take out the dogs, help me w dinner, washes the dishes, feeds and walks the dogs, then on alternate nights, does the laundry, washes the floors, cleans the bathroon, does the laundry, does food shopping, all errands, he is like the energizer bunny, he is lucky if he has an hour in a week to himself. There has been no form of sex life for over 4 years, does he ever complain, not once and yet on my bad days who do I take it out on? Him ofcourse. I have begged him to leave me, I am not the woman he married any longer, I bring him no pleasure because I am not only chronically in pain, a 10 pain scale is a good day but chronically depressed. He of course refuses and says I am stuck with him for life! That makes me feel more guilty.
I will say he was not as understanding in the beginning, always nagging me to do more, try to excercise more, that was when I was still able to walk and work. After I becae totally disabled he started coming in to the dr.'s office with me and finally realized what I was really living with and going thru, so that is what changed him. If it was any other man he would have gone out for a beer 4 years ago and never come back!!!
So I know I rambled and did not give you the answer you need, maybe your husband needs to read what I wrote about mine, maybe he needs to be told how he sucks as a husband at this point! I don't know how you put up with it, i give you credit for that. If u ever need to talk, please feel free to email me.
Take care of yourself, because you are the only one who can do that and I would seriously consider getting in his face, it's very obvious he is blind to what you are going through.
Anna
Thank you for writing. It helps just knowing someone read my post and let me know they care. You are right, I just realized! It is a form of abuse. We are stuck with each other. Our home was paid for but in 2004 right before Katrina on Memorial day A lot of KY and WV was flooded. Our home was flooded. It was split level, somehow the hard rain and winds seperated the house where it was vulnerable. It rained that whole year seems like. Any way June 22nd our home burned to the ground , I was trapped upstairs. My son and nephew broke the wooden fence around the deck to our pool which led to our bedroom which was where I was trapped. I escaped with some irratated lungs and amber burns. Nothing serious. We lost everything. Nothing but what we had on. He wasn't home. We had to have a home built. Please feel free to contact me and maybe we can give each other some tips. You have a very compasionate husband. I am not making excuses for mine. He can be a bully. He is a Fire Chief. He had a very loud and angry mother with eight children. My parents were loving and my two brothers , one older, one younger and our baby sister eight years younger than me, were blessed. I never heard them raise thier voice to each other or any of us. i never even heard them say a cuss word. I was way out of element when we married. But he had warned me of his Mom. He and I are completely different people than what we were. We finished each others sentences. I would be thinking of something and he would come in and make a comment on what I had been thinking about. My younger brother was severely injured in a coal ming accident in 1984. He became addicted to pain medication. Back then the Doctors were not as hesitant to precribe pain medication as they are today. We were each others best friend. I miss that man. I miss me too. I was a professional with a career that I loved. To be a job is something that has to be done. I worked at a few of those. That's why when he became so ill, I knew I needed more education. After three years I recieved my liscense as a Respiratory Care Pratitioner or a Cardiopulmanologist. At some hospitals they gave you different title. Basicly the same. ER Trauma, ICU, High risk deliveries, or preemies. I worked midnights. There was the routine work also, breathing treatment, Patient education, oxygen therapy. Pulmonary Functions. etc. When I worked and he was able to do so, he did help with all the house work. He tells me all the time that "if didn't stay on to me " I'd be a druggie like my brother." I do confront him and throw it in his face how different he treats me and how I treated him. He said " You always come up with some kind of Excuse".
well I have to say u have been thru hell and back! I am so sorry about your home, that has always been a nightmare of mine, I cannnot imagine how devestating that must be, but thank God u were all right.
So obviously youtr husbands attitude not only comes from his job but his upbringing. Mine came from 10 kids, they were always fighting, some do not talk to this day, very sad. I always thought having a big family would be great, I have only 1 brother, but once I married into one I realized how lucky I was!
As far as your husbands comments about your becoming addicted like your brother, well my youngest brother in law from age 16 was a drug fiend, hardcore herion junkie, but just about everything else along w it. For the first 2o yrs., of our marriage he was in jail almost 90% of the time, he was the yougest, the 7th son of a 7th son, so there is an old saying about that, they are just plain no good. For the last few years, he dies 10 years ago, not from drugs, he just did enough to stay straight, livied w my mother in law all his life, and in all honesty my husband was the only one that could cxontrol him, and cared about him, so he would do absolutely anything for my kids and me, and all the others thought I was insane to allow him around, some of them w young daughters swore he would rape them if left alone!!! At times he was very violent, and because of that my husband always hated drugs, and now it turns out I am addicted over 4 years to tons of pain pills. I had to detox twice and it was not pretty, I thought he would hate it and me for becoming like I am but just the opposite, I guess because he knows the amount of pain I live in. His brother was by choice.
You never said what is exactly wrong w you. I know u can at least function and get out which is a great thing, I wish I could!
I would totally ignore your husband regarding the pain meds, if u feel u need them, shame on him, so get a script and stash them somewhere, would't u be shocked if they helped and u actually felt better?
I am verry slow, and don't know if I mentioned in my list of diseases-LOL, I also have a tumor behind my left retina and am 3/4 blind in 1 ryr and have cateract in other,so what used to take me an hour to make now takes me maybe 4-5, so I don't pump out the work like I used to.
Take care of you, and go get some pain meds.
Anna
Dear Anna, Sounds like you're living through your own hell too. Thank you for being so concerned.My problems were triggered by a fall I had down a flight of stairs at work in 87'. I looked like the hunchback of Notre Dame. My neck and "wing " (as my youngest son calls it) on the left side was grossly swollen and bruised. My left hip and buttock area was also bruised and swollen. It took two years of different dr's and Psych's to finally get to the cause of my pain. I had an upslip of the pelvic and sacariliac joints. It has same symptoms of ruptured disc, but sense "they" couldn't find a ruptured disc it was all in my head. My wing and shouder and neck area was torn and has internal scarring that never lets up on the pain. It is hard for me to do anything over fifteen minutes. Sit stand walk, whatever. Of course the right side of back hurts because it is being forced to function in a different motion that was natural.
I finally ended up at a Pain Clinic/Rehab for four weeks, NO PAIN MEDS was thier motto. But they did find out what was causing all the leg and lower back pain. I had been too ashamed to tell any of the other doc's that I hurt in front too. They already didn't belive me. One doc told me that in his experiance most workers comp cases didn't heal fast. He ordered an EEG (thats where they put the long thin needles into the nerve endings) on my lower back, I asked him to do it on my upper back & neck. He said that the test would prove I was malingering. I was so shocked! I had the test done and got the results, I had my husband accompany me to get them. The doc was so totally different with me. The tests showed I had C6, C7, T2, L3,L4,L5, and SI, radiculopathy. I got my records from him and never saw him again. Any way at the rehab place they discovered my left leg was somewhat shorter than the other. After a lot of head scratching and conferences and tests on me they told me that when I fell I had landed on the left buttock and side and gave myself a very serious whiplash of my neck. Also the pelvic and SI, was out of place which had caused my body to build scar tissue around it to hold it in place, which had caused the leg to shorten. I worked hard to get to go back to work. I finally felt I was ready. I had been awarded Disabled Social Security. I gave it up to go back to work. In 92 I was kicked by a patient in the lower right side of my body. The next morning she got me again. Although I had a witnesses who could represent me for the Union and I verbally told my boss and the day shift workers during Report it didn't matter. That happened on Thursday night and Friday morning. Sometime Sunday day i started vomitting. I was in worse pain that labour. To make a long story short I ended up going to Emergency Surgery Tuesday night. My kidneys were failing. My right ureter (the thin tube that drains urine from the kidney to the bladder) was kinked. So now any time now I will probably have to have the right kidney removed. Its making it by setting my alarm for every two hours and drinking 8 ounces of water. Not during the night but if i get up I should drink some. That is another source of chronic pain. My blood pressure is high. I am starting to get headaches now too. In the part of KY where I live is very rural. We are about 20 minutes from Pikeville KY and fifteen minutes from Williamson WV. All we have are coal mines, banks, lawyers and hospitals. Oh yeah, gas stations and fast food places. Any how, the abuse of prescription drugs is very high. The local law enforement on any side of the Tug River ; KY and WV , Ohio and VA are arresting any body caught dr shopping. (Going to different dr's and getting the same meds.) Instead of going after the big time dealers of street drugs, I don't know the name of them, but i'm sure cocaine is one of them. instead they are targeting what I feel would probably be innocent people if they had not been set up. For one; A man in his late sixties was asked for a pain pill by a visitor to his son's house. The visitor (undercover cop) asked if he could buy some pills. The man said no he didn't know his son's business. The visitor assured the man that he came there often and bought prescription pain pills. Finally the man said he guessed it would probably be alright but he was only going to get him one pill, in case his son didn't want to sell. They arrested the man, found him guilty and sentenced him to five years!
I know I got off track there. I had to take several breaks while writing this. After the kidney thing I returned to work after I had got some strength back. But eventually I had to retire. I just couldn't work full speed ahead as I had done. I was in too much pain and I was afraid I would make a mistake and accidentally cause harm to one of my patients. That was a hard decision to make. I really, really loved my work and my patients. A lot of time you would get a patient from first diagnosis to death. The years in between you get attached to them and their families. I hate to admit it but the first thing I look at in the daily paper is the obits. I've been off work so long now I don't recognize very many names now. I don't like to talk on the phone, not even answer it most of the time. I have always love to write. Poems, short stories for my kids whatever interested me enough. i want to thank you again and God bless you and your husband.
Sandy
Oh this is too much!! I cannot believe how similiar e are! I also look like the hunchback. I also drop on a 75 degree angle to the left both shoulders and hips, and my left leg is 13/4" shorter!!!! U never told me how old u r.
I still cannot believe you cannot get any kind of pain meds. It is bad here, you can buy anything u want on the street, but if they catch u with one pill that is not in a script bottle it is all over! Right now they are trying to pass leagalized marijuana. That is such a jike to me, if they went after the drunk drivers like they go after pot smokers there would not be 1/2 the dead people there are. Did u ever read of someone who took a hit of pot killing someone in a drunken rage, or a hit and run? Breast cancer runs in my and hubbies fam., when his sister had her 1st masectomy she went to NY to get script pot, what they did to it with chemicals was terrible, it did nothing for her, then after her other masec., she was on so many pain pills u could not keep track. That is one thing here, they pass out pain meds like m and m's! I can't believe how strict they r there, and that poor old man, I think it should be against the law to set up people like that, it is sinful.
I also have had kidney problems my entire life, I have 2 on my left side and 1 on the right, the left barely works and I get constant infections.
I will keep you in my prayers, I think we both need all the help we can get. Today was a very bad day for me, it was snowing and the pain was like 10++++, I think I cried 1/2 the day just out of disgust. When I get this bad I think of my 6 yr. old g-daughter who is terminal. I think of my son and all the pain he is suffering and I feel blessed in comparrison. So there is always someone sonewhere much worse off than we are.
Take care and write me whenever u want. I also am a writer and not a talker!!
Anna
Anna, this is just too weird! I am 53, married when I was 19 had a set of twins ten and half months later. Both weighed over 10 lbs. I only brought one home though. My belief is the other was sold. That is too long a story to go into now though. Thier birthday is Feb. 1st . This time of year is bad for me emotionally. I am amazed at how simular our health problems are. I also get a lot of infections. I have to get a urine culture done every three months to stay on top of them. A simple basic urine test does not always show infections apparently, so says my Kidney doc. This whole month has been bad. My husband had a BAD Cluster Headache last night. We had all three G kids with us. My Sean, he just turned ten Dec 17 his sister Mikaela will be nine Jan 17, little Isabell who will be two Jan 25. They are so precious to me. Sean tries to be the girl's hero. He watch's out for both of them. When Mikaela has really hurt herself she wants her brother. She wrecked her bike over the summer, hurt her ankel. Sean carried her at least 30 feet and then up eight steps into the house and sat her on the couch. Last night he and i were talking and we heard a thump and then the baby cry. She had fell off the bed. Sean reached her before i could. He kissed and petted on her telling her it's alright. Then she came to me and I started to sing a song to her, she took her bottle out of her mouth to say "rockabye baby". I was not singing the right song apparently. I could talk about them all day.The two oldest ones are living a rough life with their Mom and her new boyfriend. They need some hard praying for to keep them safe. My son still loves her. I appreciate your concern about me. My pain level is around one hundred. i can barely think. I hope for pain free days for both of us. Just
one whole day without pain. Can you imagine that? See ya later. Sandy
I have had 6 surguries in 6 yrs. I also have been diagnosed with chronic pain syndrome for the past four years I have been getting worse. I have finally found a doctor that is trying to help me regain a quality of life. My husband does not understand why I do not clean the house when I was healthy or want to have sex, because of my pain, I also lost a great job over my condition. Now he says he is not in love with me anymore. He has not been supportive thru all of my battle with my condition. I am still in love with him and at this point I don't know what to do, we have been married for 20 years.Help me understand why, and what I should do.My heart is broken. Becuse I know in my heart if he was hurt I would be there for him.
I cannot explain men. They simply think the woman in thier lives are majicians. We should be able to majically keep the house spotless, raise perfectly behaved children
cook like a cordon bleu chef, work full time at a job or career and look like a playboy bunny and perform like a porn star in the bedroom. What is his imput into this wonderful fantasy he lives in? 8-12 hour days; five days a week. Go fishing or hunting or golfing or boating, whatever his favorite past time is for whatever season it is. While he (still!!) performs in the bedroom like a teenager; five minutes and its over, if it works at all? Thirty five years with this man! It might not sound like it, but yes I do love him. He is actually my best friend and he knows exactly how I feel. Does he care? On rare occasion he does care. That is what keeps me with him. The old keezer told me last night that I didn't pay any attention to him when he was sick all day yesterday. Who made us interupt our three hour trip to our granddaughter's birthday party yesterday and come back home because he was feeling bad? Who did my best to help him into the house and get him his medication and something light to eat, becasue he was feling nausea. That would be me. I was feeling like some one was using me for a hot needle pin cushion. My muscles were so tight across my back at the top of my neck and over my "wings" I could barely move. I will not take mecication while away from home. I have to be "on call" in case I have to take over driving for him. I have suffered with fibromyalgia since 1988. It was called fibrsistitis, or something like that. It has changed its name a couple of times. I saw one Rheumatoidolygist that called it Polymyalgia. I have a full blown wide spread case of it. I also have bulging discs at C-6&7, T 2, L3,4,5, and SI 1, down my spine. I have osteoarthritis, osteomylaycia, kidney infarction, Nephrophlebitis, and other chronic pain areas.