Is anyone else caring for their dying spouse?
My husband will probably die from pancreatic cancer within a year. He's already survived for more than 3.5 years which is quite long for this cancer. Now it's recurred and his chances aren't so good. It's true we never know, but this time feels very different. My gut tells me he won't beat it this time.
He takes his anger out on me which makes me angry at him. This may make it easier for me to let him go, but it's wrong for him to be verbally abusive and I resent it. I deserve to be treated better than this. I don't want to abandon him in these last stages of sickness because I've decided to stick to my marriage vows long before now.
I guess I'll have to walk out of the room or wherever I am more often and leave him wherever he is when he gets abusive. It's just harder when he's not well. I'll need to carry taxi money just in case as I have for years. What a story he'll tell if I have to leave him somewhere public!
Sometimes I feel like I'm falling and there's nothing below to catch me. A very frightening feeling. That's the feeling of the unknown...for me the unknown is having my spouse of 42 years die. Coping with the changes, with life after the changes. There will be some good freedoms and some bad times of missing the good things. I'll lean heavily on the Lord and others. It's a very good thing I already have an excellent counselor. I'm going to need her. I'm going to need a lot of people in so many ways. How about you?
However, he can and has invented many super things, but the stumbling block is the EXORBITANT clinical trials needed before his genius ideas can be marketed.
The only definitive test for pan. cancer would be a CAT scan with radioactive dye and no Dr. would want to order this based on an unlikely chance that someone might have the cancer. No insurance company would foot the bill, either. Your nephew's test will be a welcome addition to the tools in the medical world's arsenal.
Yes, you are right, I just have to keep working at it.
Very good advice. I've done this before, but I tend to get snagged by wanting to finish what I'm doing or he hits a hot button issue and I respond back...and you see that I don't always do what you recommend.
Often I don't want to leave because I'm the one being punished by losing doing what I'm doing and he wins by "sending me away" out of the room. He's devious that way. So I've left the room and I was doing something there that I now have lost the privilege of doing. And he stays and gets to do what he wants without me there to defer to. If I'm in the middle of a project it's often hard to leave it and just go...I'm the one being punished. That's often the case.
I do get your point. I have become much stronger with this problem. I've had to distance myself so that his insults don't hurt as much because he's very cagey about trying to snag guilt and manipulate me. I think he could do it in his sleep because it's so ingrained. I can't let him control me. Thank you for your advice.
Blessings to you and strength to weather the bad breaks you've been given. My heart goes out to you.
You've made some good points.
In my reply to dragonbait (sorry if you've read this a few times already) I wrote 1 reason my husband may be carrying around anger at me. Yes, he has retained some dementia. I know I can't reason with dementia-origin thinking. When my husband sets himself against me, he usually can't be reasoned with at all. Was he always angry? No, not for many years. But his anger is cumulative. He's explained his day this way: He wakes up at 100% ok. Something happens and he's down to 95%. Something else happens(presumably negative in this example) and he's down maybe 91%. And so the day depletes downward. He has no resource to increase in his attitude. To recharge. My observation is that this is true for his lifetime also. He lets the anger accumulate over the years and it just builds and builds with an occasional release in a huge explosion of anger: Intermittent Explosive Personality Disorder.
I like your idea of my being compassionate and being aware of possible pain that he may have, but only sometimes is he open to my care and concerns for his well-being. Sometimes things flow smoothly and sometimes he just rejects anything I try to do or say. I like all of your good ideas and observations, and I wish my husband would cooperate! Thank you for writing to me!
not notice that they are in pain, but they notice that they aren't happy!
it's hard to balance being a "good person" and protecting yourself. Good luck!
I'm sorry to hear about the anger you had to bear as a child. It was wrong and I wish it had never happened to you. As far as talking to my husband, you are being logical and I totally agree with you. But he isn't logical at all...he's emotional and doesn't function logically. We've had many discussions about his anger but he doesn't change. He, too, was brought up with the inappropriate use of anger as a method of control and abuse. That's why I have to remove myself from his presence when he gets illogical and abusive. He can't control himself...can't even identify the problem or place where he went wrong. He has Intermittent Explosive Personality Disorder on top of that. Then he REALLY can't control his anger. You have good common sense about this and I very much wish common sense worked with my husband all of the time.
I hope that's not what would really happen. What a gloomy picture of the future that would be! I wish you a much better future and pray that all will go smoothly for you and your fears will have been for nothing.
Thank you for taking the time to give such complete advice. For me, the need for all that came years ago when my husband was diagnosed with early onset dementia so I have all my ducks in a row by this point. The curious thing is that he proceeded to recover from this dementia in a very significant way 2 years ago and no one can account for this. He still has some remnants of it, but he's recovered a great deal of his abilities that were gone for 6 years.
Anyway, all paperwork is in place except final arrangements and finishing up with personal items which we will address fairly soon. I only recently allowed John to be my health surrogate or a say in my POA because I wasn't confident he was recovered from his dementia. But it's clear he really has by now. We have separate banks and accounts though we share access to them. We each have separate investments and so forth. I always carry cab money but haven't used it in about 3-4 years.
When a loved one or friend of mine has a problem, I research it as thoroughly as I think it needs to be. So I've covered a lot of ground on this cancer. And no matter what has happened before, each person is an individual and doesn't necessarily conform to the statistics. As far as being abusive, that came with the dementia. His abusiveness increased from sometimes to most of the time. I believe I wrote most of the story in my reply to dragonbait.
I think your advice is good, but I happened to have followed it already. I appreciate the thoughtful ideas. I know how important they are.
I know just what you mean when you say it's hard not to be hurt even when you know the harsh words are the disease speaking and not your husband. I know quetiapine is used in a lot of circumstances because of it's sleep inducing side effects. I hope it's a good help to both you and your husband.Thank you for your blessings and I, too, am glad you have good support for yourself. Both you and your husband are in my thoughts and prayers. Blessings to you both.
Was he always angry or is this new? If you can dig up some compassion, that might help. When he says something horrible, say something like, "Oh, honey, I'm sorry you're feeling so bad. You never wanted things to end up like this, did you?" Maybe more important, can you treat his physical pain? My father never cried out from the pain, but I think it was worse than I realized. When someone is in constant, low to moderate pain, they may not notice that they are in pain, but they notice that they aren't happy!
it's hard to balance being a "good person" and protecting yourself. Good luck!
I didn't address the topic of my staying in the home: I believe my husband is confident I'm committed to staying with him until the end. If you read the story in dragonbait's response that helps you, plus my husband is feeling safe enough to insult me and see that I'm not going anywhere, nor am I threatening to leave. I'm making a lot of changes to our home that are personal, decorating, fun changes that indicate I'm staying. When we talk, the subject of my staying is always done in a manner that assures him I am staying. I get no message of insecurity from him.
If you look at my answer to dragonbait, you will see a very likely reason why my husband may be mad at me. Another is that he likes to be in control of everything. He always wants to be right, no matter the cost to the relationship or conversation. This is only within the family living in the home. I can see the reasons you gave for arguments happening, but for my husband I would guess most likely is the bedroom/bathroom issue. He picks arguments over the most insignificant of words which does indeed make it easier to cope with him dying, but I wonder if it really helps all that much in the end. The frustration or anger of an argument seems fairly brief compared to the period of dying and mourning and adjusting to living a different life.