Your Perspectives on arguments please

ElaineC · Regular Joined: 17 May 2005 Posts: 22 Location: UK

I have terminal cancer but am undergoing chemotherapy to prolong my life. I keep having arguments with my husband all the time and I would like to get other people's perspectives on them.

This week's row has been typically trivial and stupid, in my eyes anyway.
A friend has organised a rota of people to ferry me back and forth to the hospital which is some distance away. This is so my husband doesn't have to lose too much of his working time.

My husband liaises with him and sends the directions etc to whoever's doing the lift.

The next fortnight is a little different because I am having a scan this Wednesday which means I am going in slightly later and the following week I go to see the oncologist to get the result and discuss where we go from there. The oncologist's appt. is on Thursday & the research nurse said she would alter my chemo day to Thursday from Wednesday so I don't have to come in twice in a week.

My husband had asked me to confirm both of these arrangements when I went last Wednesday but I only dealt with the next week's appointment rather than both of them. A simple mistake, I just forgot, probably because it was a fortnight hence and besides there wasn't really any question that the chemo could be transferred to another day. It was C being pernickety again and wanting all i's dotted and t's crossed.

When I got home and he found out I hadn't confirmed what was happening on the 8th Feb he went on one of his rants saying I didn't care about him and the time he spent doing all this, that I could arrange it all myself and on and on and on. Didn't matter that I'd just got home from having chemo of course and felt awful.

The next morning I phoned the hospital to confirm the arrangements but the ward clerk wouldn't do this and said I would have to speak with the research nurse who said that this was what I could do. Of course when I was put through to her I got her voice mail.

He then made a big song and dance about how I wasn't being assertive enough, that surely there must be a usual procedure and that he'd have been able to do it, the clerk probably just didn't want to exert herself to find out and so has taken the classic bureaucrat's way of passing on to someone else. All probably v. true but I am being treated by these people not him and I need to have good relationships with them.

I asked him what was concerning him about something that is, after all
a fortnight away? To be told that he doesn't like to be "unreliable" and it embarrasses him contacting the friend M with all the changes there have been lately. I replied that illness is an unreliable thing anyway and that people (most of all M who's had kidney cancer himself) know that
individuals don't have a great deal of control over hospital
appointments and their timings.

He then said, "But if you'd asked yesterday I could have gone ahead.
This is why I am so pissed off."

My response that chemo affects memory terribly and that he's lucky I'm
not a zombie like so many people become on it was just met with an
angry outburst about how much he does for me. I refrained from saying
what was on my lips:

"There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned."

And that's it, I feel as if he's making a mental inventory of
everything he does and seeing me as a burden. I do need to say that
but it's so hard to say what I feel to C as it leads to these terrible
confrontations and shouting which reduce me to jelly.

Later on Thursday I just completely broke down showing my vulnerability only to get the suggestion from him that maybe I should move out. Maybe I'd be better on my own.

Part of me can't believe this is happening. Considering what I am going through I am doing so much and yet it never seems enough. I feel as if I have to be completely alert for everything C might require in spite of being so ill.

Vee Smith · Moderator Joined: 12 Feb 2006 Posts: 796 Location: UK

Hello Elaine, How difficult people can be! I suppose he feel that everything is beyond his control and doesn't like it. I don't know the answer to the problem, apart from throwing a complete wobbly and having hysterics. However, would he listen to your Macmillan nurse - I presume you have one? Perhaps it's time someone outside takes a hand.

ElaineC · Regular Joined: 17 May 2005 Posts: 22 Location: UK

Even if I could do it hysterics wouldn't work with this one, Vee. I agree that control is the issue here. He has spent the past 15 years or so creating a situation for himself (self employment from home) where he is in total control and he doesn't respond at all well to anything which threatens that control as of course cancer does in particular.

You're not the first person to mention Macmillan Nurses, virtually everyone I know with cancer has one but no-one's ever made me the offer. How are they allocated?

Thanks for responding. I appreciate it.

Vee Smith · Moderator Joined: 12 Feb 2006 Posts: 796 Location: UK

You should have been offered one on terminal diagnosis. Talk to your oncology team and ask for a reference to Macmillan. There should be a group within reach of most hospitals - where are you being treated?

ElaineC · Regular Joined: 17 May 2005 Posts: 22 Location: UK

The hospital where I am being treated is 30 miles away from where I actually live.

Vee Smith · Moderator Joined: 12 Feb 2006 Posts: 796 Location: UK

Hi Elaine - this is the Macmillan website - you will be able to check for your nearest contacts: http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Get_Support/Find_information/Macmillan_information_centres/Find_a_centre_near_you.aspx

ElaineC · Regular Joined: 17 May 2005 Posts: 22 Location: UK

Thanks v. much Vee. I wonder how common arguments like this are? My husband has always been a rather high emotional maintenance sort of man but I had thought that in the circumstances he would give me more leeway. I know I would if the roles were reversed.

cjago · Regular Joined: 14 Jan 2006 Posts: 42

Goodness Elaine, I only just read this. Poor you. I am so lucky.

Your husband is (was? hope it has improved in the weeks since you posted) behaving like a total dickhead. I expect he's scared shitless. I don't really think that's an excuse, but it's a reason, poor bloke.

The only thing I can suggest is apologising humbly for being ill - not because you are feeling apologetic (but really what does it matter now?), but because you might be able to make him break down and cry and bring some love back. On the very rare occasions we have a spat, that's usually how we resolve it.

I think being the partner of someone terminal is very very hard. I mean, after all we ARE a burden, no matter how loved a burden. (I am sort of slowly terminal at the moment). A Macmillan nurse might be helpful, but it will depend a lot on the person. Vee is right, you should certainly have been put in touch.

Of course I don't know him at all, but it may be that without knowing it, he is just wanting someone to acknowledge that he is having a hard time too. Does he have any friends who do that? You may be best placed to do it, but whether you want to is up to you. I'm not sure I would for someone who has suggested I move out.

Speaking quite cold-bloodedly, I doubt you would be better off alone - it would be very hard later on. Even if you don't want to bring him round for love's sake, you might want to for your own sake. If you could get him to be Loving Martyr Who Everyone Thinks is So Wonderful, it would probably be good for you.

I hope you don't min me being so frank, but at this point there's no room for anything else, is there?
_________________
adenocarcinoma of the breast, now widely metastatic (stomach, liver, pelvis, pancreas, bones, skin)
survived 11 years so far

ElaineC · Regular Joined: 17 May 2005 Posts: 22 Location: UK

Thanks for replying cjago. Things have settled down a bit since I posted but I am always walking on eggshells at a time when I could do without it. The latest came last night when I walked into our living room carrying a plate and a hot drink. He asked me to close the door in a rather bad tempered way so I shut it by kicking back my foot. I was then berated for being "aggressive" and told how sick he was of me being "so hostile all the time."
Those are rather favourite words of his for me but no one else has ever described me in those terms.

I agree with you that I think he needs acknowledgement from somewhere about how well he's coping and how much he's doing. I have suggested that he talks to someone most particularly a close friend of both of ours who himself had kidney cancer some years ago and at one point looked as if he was going to be terminal too. But he says he doesn't need to talk to anyone.

I am interested to see your own diagnosis. How long have you been living with the terminal prognosis?

cjago · Regular Joined: 14 Jan 2006 Posts: 42

Well, like I say, you could try breaking down and telling him how sorry you are to have messed his life up blah blah. But I certainly am not suggesting you ought to!

If he "doesn't need to talk to anyone" I rather doubt a Macmillan will be that much use. Or maybe your friend could talk to him? "must be awful for you" etc? Anyone who could shock him out of his "I can cope/stiff/upper lip/not my fault" mode.

I'm a bit complicated. I was diagnosed metastatic at the beginning of 2003, and at first they thought it was a new gastric primary because of some histopathology vs my original early bc in 1996. After 3 months of totally useless (and vile) chemo, I was expected to die within the year of "untreated gastric cancer". Everyone has gradually decided that I actually have metastatic bc basically because I'm still alive!

I'm in reasonably good general health - my onc says I have "tumours in inconvenient places" rather than (as yet) a very heavy tumour load. So I'm terminal in the sense that it'll kill me off eventually, but maybe not for a while unless one of the inconvenient places gets me. The pancreas (last Aug) was not good, but they stented me to save my liver and Taxol has has some effect, although not a spectacular one.

All the on-off back-forth stuff is so hard on partners. I'm worried my husband, who is totally brilliant, will crack up (for a while anyhow) once I finally go, but there's nothing on earth I can do about it.

BTW, I had radiofrequency ablation for a liver met - is that an option for you? Obviously not curative, but it buys you time, which is what it's all about.
_________________
adenocarcinoma of the breast, now widely metastatic (stomach, liver, pelvis, pancreas, bones, skin)
survived 11 years so far

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