The phone stops ringing and friends disappear when people get ill.

Why is health often such a great decider in relationsships?

Seen it many times the last past years. People have died and relationships have disappeared like it was the most natural thing. Family members of mine have fallen very ill the past few years and there is a noticeable distance building up to other people that were close to our family only days before the illness.

You can always buy clothes, a fancy car or try to earn a higher salary to get the love back that has been taken from you. But when you get ill, you often do not have the means to earn back anything.

It is like the facts about health and its predicaments is a taboo.

Or things that would prevent them from doing what they want. Being around sick or poor people reminds us the same could happen to ourselves. We don't want to think about it. We want to enjoy life. Yet if we ever were poor or sick, we'd want people to be our friends.

I had a college class once with a student with cerebreal palsy. This student could not walk talk or write. Her mother pushed her in a wheel chair every where. Answered questions in class and wrote out her homework for her. One life for the price of two. I was amazed by the mothers patience as her daughter communicated by pointing at letters on an alphabet board. I wondered at the lack of efficiency and over all expense of such a life. And I was grateful that I did not have the same lot in life. I dont think I could do it.

I dont have an answer to your question but its not only about fancy cars and houses. I didnt make it to see my TBM aunt the last time she was in the hospital before passing away. I loved for her. But sometimes just the struggle of balancing my life demands gets in the way of finding an extra 3 hours in the day to drive across town to feel helpless in changing the inevitable. I told myself she would be home soon enough. There was also the burden of her always telling me I needed to make good with the church. I am sorry I didnt make it.

Taddlywog Wrote:
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> to feel helpless in changing the inevitable.

Yes, even if the sickness is something the person will most likely recover from, there are only so many times you can wish him a speedy recovery. Even if you just try to have conversations like you did before, there are those awkward moments when you realize you're talking about things you've done lately that the sick person can't do, that you're talking about life going on normally while the other person is stuck in bed or in the house. And, of course, you can't talk about your own problems, because they seem rather petty compared to being sick. So you end up walking on eggshells, which strains the whole situation. It takes an exceptionally strong friendship to work through all that.

Under the guise of "Gee, I been SO busy lately. You know, the kids, the grandkids..."

I experienced this a few years ago. I hate it that my husband is going through the same damn thing now that he had to retire for health reasons.

Doxi, I e-mailed you, but my computer didn't like the e-mail address. It wouldn't send it. I tried several ways.

Like I said, i'm not very computer literate. There may be a fix, but I wouldn't have a clue what that would be. Is there another way I can e-mail you?

If you get sick, prepare to be abandoned. Brace yourself against a lot of crazy and offensive things that people will say to you.
Learn to enjoy your own company, it's what you'll have the most of. Don't expect the medical community to be any better at dealing with it.

If you think about it, most people are friends because of common activities. If something happens and you can no longer do the things you used to do, you're going to lose those friends. Most people can't handle sitting and talking with you. They want to be anywhere but where they are.

The idea that you can't talk about your problems with someone who is sick doesn't apply to everyone. Sometimes its nice to know that everyone else has problems too. Sick people have a lot of time to think and read about things. They may have a perspective you haven't yet thought of.

I've had to learn to focus on things I can do. I'm not dead. I just can't do all of the things I used to do. It annoys me way more than it does the people around me.

All I ask is, don't try to sell me stuff. Don't tell me about all the cures (that aren'), and don't say things like "if you would------. Also, I've probably read volumes about my illness. I know more about it than most dr.'s.

When you get sick you don't suddenly cease to be who you are. Same person, just have a body that won't cooperate.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2012 12:30PM by Mia.

"You can always buy clothes, a fancy car or try to earn a higher salary to get the love back that has been taken from you. But when you get ill, you often do not have the means to earn back anything."

Get the love back? If you have to earn it back, how is that love?

Exactly.

When I became ill with an automimmune disease at the age of 24, the man who had asked me to marry him and called me the "love of his life" changed toward me instantly. To add insult to injury, his primary concern was that my having the illness affected my appearance, because fatigue prevented me from going to the gym if I wanted to make it to work, too (I gained all of 13 pounds), nor could I afford the expensive hair, nails, and up-to-the-minute clothing I could previously afford, while paying on thousands of dollars in medical bills. Over the space of a few months, he started to look for faults and pick fights over innocuous things, trashing our relationship, deliberately, to try to give himself an excuse to walk out on other trumped-up grounds, so he wouldn't look, in the eyes of our friends and families, like the shallow low-life he really was for walking out on me because I was "defective". Of course, he made sure he found a replacement for me before he took off, and had the nerve to ask me if I would remain on the back burner for him while he dated my replacement, just in case he was making "the biggest mistake of his life". I refused. He married her a few months later, having the wedding reception where we had planned to have ours.

Fast forward a couple of years, to the next guy, whom I had met while I was at my sickest and who swore he would continue to see me even if he "had to see me through a glass window". He eventually also bailed, telling me, "I want to find someone just like you, only healthy". Among other things, he had a scary family medical history, and was concerned that when it caught up to him, he needed to be with someone he could be sure would be able to take care of HIM.

Mind you, I didn't need physical assistance of any sort from them. Essentially, I just got tired and had to rest up for taxing activites, etc. There wasn't anything I couldn't do, they just didn't like the fact that there was someting wrong. Like they were buying a horse.

Some friends disappeared when they heard I was sick, too. But others stepped up, and they're pricel;ess to me.

While I do feel very angry at those two men for taking up time I could have spent looking for actual decent human beings with whom I might have been in a much better situation now, I learned from them and from the flaky friends that I had some good things to offer that they didn't---like loyalty and character. I know how much it hurts to have someone abandon you for something that isn't your fault, but try to remember that it's their personal defects, not yours, that caused your friends/family to do what they've done, and you DID deserve better, even if they didn't have the character to stand by you as you would have stood by them.