I’ve been thinking hard lately and I think I might have to break up with my fiancee. She’s only 25, but she seems to be hospitalized about twice a year with some kind of dangerous infection.
I love her, but I’m scared of the idea that our future kids won’t even get a childhood because she’ll be in and out of the hospital all the time. If her health is declining now, how will she be at 40?
I’m also concerned about passing down her genes. Her father spent decades suffering with a debilitating auto-immune disease (MS) before dying quite recently.
Her father’s biological mother probably also had some kind of auto-immune disease, although she passed away so many decades ago that doctors didn’t really understand it at the time.
Will our kids have the same problem?
Personally, at 28, I’m pretty healthy. I haven’t even got the sniffles in almost a year. Her siblings and other relatives seem pretty healthy, too.
I feel like a bastard for thinking of abandoning her. In a world full of backstabbers and thieves, it’s rare to find someone as genuinely honest and kind as her, not to mention our personalities are such a great match. I guess “soulmate” is the word.
But I don’t want to spend my life taking care of someone medically.
Have you thought about discussing with her what her prognosis is? Have you thought about going with her to her doctor to discuss the likelihood of passing whatever it is to your children?
On second thoughts this quote:
makes me wonder what is going on. Your fiancee is hospitalized “about twice a year” with “some kind of dangerous infection”?
You don’t know exactly how often your fiancee has been hospitalized, and you don’t know the nature of the “dangerous infection”?
I’m sure you will excuse me if I have serious doubts about the veracity of what you have posted.
It is what it is. You don’t owe anyone your love or support.
You could make it work, but if you are going to break up, please do it sooner than later. She’s 25, and that’s a point where you don’t want to be investing in a relationship that is going nowhere, especially if you don’t even know that’s what you are doing. Give her the same chance that you have- the chance to plan her future with full information and to look for a more suitable partner. Don’t string her along and waster her time just because you’re short on guts, you’re waiting for someone new, or it’s just easier to stay together than to break up.
Think I have a double-dose of what you’re looking for here. My mom was chronically ill during my entire lifetime, and my spouse is disabled. Bear with me, this will be a long post.
First, let me applaud you for actually sitting down and thinking this over carefully. You are correct that there are serious, serious issues involved here and it could be a very long haul. It’s best to go into such a relationship with your eyes open.
A little backstory on me:
My mom suffered from a hereditary form of cardiovascular disease that, prior to modern medicine, routinely killed people in their mid-40’s. In some cases, even in their teens. It is inherited via an autosomal dominant gene, meaning you either have it or you don’t, there are no “silent carriers”. Someone carrying one gene would typically die in his or her 40’s, and had a 50% chance of passing it on to any child they had. If you got a double-dose of the gene you had a good chance of dying in your teens.
Mom and her family didn’t know that when she was young, of course - they knew a lot of relatives died in their 40’s, but back in those days LOTS of people were dead by that age, and a lucky few (those who didn’t have the gene and didn’t get taken out by something else in those pre-antibiotic days) lived into their 80’s. In mom’s case, she started having angina pains in her late 20’s (like a number of her relatives) and started seeing a cardiologist. She still had two kids after that, although by her last pregnancy she was offered the option of an abortion even in those pre-Roe v. Wade days because pregnancy with her heart problems was considered life-threatening. She still opted to have the kid (it was me, actually) and got through pregnancy and delivery just fine but really, I never had a healthy mom in a sense. Yes, she was sick through a lot of my childhood. When I was 14 she had her first heart surgery and suddenly, with my older sisters gone to college, I was doing an adult’s share of the cooking and cleaning while dad worked and my youngest older sister, who lived somewhat close, would come by and help while she could in between college and work and everything. No, it wasn’t fun.
But you know what? I don’t regret mom being around, sickness and all. Sure, going to see her in the hospital sucked, her not being to do everything the other moms could sucked, but she was my mom. And you know what? She completely defied expectations and thanks to improving medicine lived to be 77, most of those being years she enjoyed. Only the last few months was she truly debilitated. Yes, she was limited, she had problems, but we worked around the sickness and hospitalizations and her limitations. It was something that we could work out. And she was absolutely worth it.
So yes, an ill mother can be a burden on a family in one sense, but it’s not always insurmountable, and it’s not the end of the world.
And now we come to my spouse, who was born with a significant disability and whose health has since deteriorated. I married him knowing fully that he could die young, that he had real physical limitations, and yes there have been hospitalizations and as he ages he becomes more and more limited. It’s not fun. But I don’t regret it. When I got married I decided I rather have him for a few years than not at all, and it’s turning out to be more years than some people expected. Maybe my experience with my mother’s chronic poor health made me less afraid to marry him. Maybe it gave me different coping skills than a person who grew up without a chronically ill parent.
Now let’s look at some of your concerns more specifically:
Your kids will have a childhood even if mom is ill a lot and in and out of the hospital. It may be a different sort of childhood than if everyone in the family was healthy, but it will still be a childhood, and it can still be happy and fun. (Well, sitting around hospital waiting rooms was never fun, but other stuff certainly was) Maybe they won’t get as many trips to Disneyland as other kids, but there’s more than one way to have a good life.
I’m not going to tell you it will make them stronger, better human beings because, honestly, it doesn’t always work like that. There were four siblings in my family - two of us have a high tolerance for medical stuff (one of us is an MD now, in fact) and two really don’t deal well with it at all. When my mom was dying doctor-sister and I were taking care of her in her home (which is where she wanted to be) and my other surviving sister just couldn’t even be in the same room as dying mom. But she ran errands and helped clean the place and helped out in other ways, despite her own life being crazy-bad at the time. There’s no way to know in advance which kids are going to react which way.
As for “how will she be at 40?” there’s no way to predict that. That sort of uncertainty is part of the bargain when you marry someone with a chronic medical problem. Mom was “supposed to be” dead at 45, but she lived to 77. My spouse was given a life expectancy of six weeks at birth but he’s in his mid-50’s now. You likely will never be rid of the doctors, but even with serious chronic problems your financee might live a normal lifespan, and most of that time might be good time, when she’s able to do things and enjoy her life. Or, yes, she might die relatively young. You know, one of my sisters was completely physically healthy yet died at 34. I have a nephew who was in a horrific car accident at 20 and went from being healthy and genius smart to being faced with the life-long consequences of head injury and no longer being as smart and capable as he was. Good health today is no guarantee of good health tomorrow. Sometimes the young and healthy died young or become ill. You don’t know what your health will be like at 40, either. This uncetainly comes with any marriage. The difference is, with one person already have chronic problems, it’s more visibly on the table.
I don’t know. Unless she has a very specific genetic issue there is no way to know.
In the case of my family, we do have a hereditary issue to worry about. Mom had a bad gene and a 50/50 chance to pass it on (not that she knew about it at the time). It was a roll of the dice. I did not inherit the gene. I know my oldest surviving sister did and, like mom, was under the care of a cardiologist by 30. However, she is in MUCH better shape at her current age than mom was. There are more treatments for the condition, you see. Mom was on disability by that age, whereas my sister is working a full schedule as a doctor. My sister might still die young, but she also stands a good chance of living a normal lifespan, perhaps even more than that despite her problems. Did either of her two kids get the gene? I don’t know. It was a 50/50 chance either of them could get it. But you know what? Even if they did, it’s manageable, and life can still be worthwhile even with a chronic problem.
In which case maybe she just got a bad roll of the dice, something idiosyncratic and limited to her. You have no way to know if her problems are inheritable or not (my spouse’s birth defect, for example, is NOT genetic and could not be inherited by any children he might have had)
On the other hand, it’s a normal thought when one member of a couple is healthy and another is not. I wouldn’t call it a good thought, but it’s damn common. Not everyone acts on that, though. Plenty of people decide it’s worth the risk to go ahead and spend their life with someone wonderful who just happens to not be as healthy as some of the rest of us.
Frankly, I’d be more worried about someone in your situation who doesn’t have that thought crop up at some point. I view it as a sign you have some real grasp of what a relationship with a person with chronic medical issues would entail. As I said - it’s normal to think that at some point. Some people leave, some people stay - it’s up to you to make that choice.
My dad married someone who “should” have died by 45, but had nearly 60 years of shared life with her. He was glad to have that time, despite the hardships involved. It can work out. To be honest, these situations don’t always have a happy ending, there are plenty of divorces and broken relationships that arise from illness and accident. All I can say is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t - and some of how that turns out is up to the people involved.
No one wants that. It’s not fun. But sometimes being with the one you love means having to deal with medical crap. I married someone disabled not because I wanted to spend my life with a cripple, I married him because I love him and want to be with him so much that I’m willing to work out how to deal with the medical stuff. That, and I am able to deal mentally with some of the bullshit that comes with that. Not everyone is.
So… yes, you have some heavy thinking to do. You might want to hash through this on your own, but some people do find talking it out with a professional for a session or two is helpful as well. Your choice. Maybe that’s part of what is scary about this - it’s your choice, there really isn’t a right or wrong answer here. You have to evaluate what YOU can handle, which may or may not be what someone else can handle.
Really, at the end of the end, all I can say is that yes, you can have a happy ending when you are related to someone with a chronic medical problem - you CAN, there is no guarantee you WILL. You have to decide whether or not to chance it.
Health problems make it VERY difficult for a relationship to work out. My mom developed some really bad chronic health issues, and that was one of the precipitating factors for her and my dad getting divorced. That being said, if you really feel like she’s your soulmate, then it might be worth staying with her. If you feel like there are plenty of other women out there for you, let her know that you aren’t good enough for your fiancee and break it off.
There are no guarantees in life. There’s always the chance that within the next 2 years you could meet someone who is just as good of a partner. And then 3 months after the wedding, she all of a sudden gets hit by a car and becomes a paraplegic, or she develops ALS or early-onset Alzheimer’s that nobody saw coming. What will you do?
When you say for better or worse, that’s exactly what it means. I think maybe a better question to ask yourself is, if dealing with a loved one who has a disability is untenable to you, should you even be considering marriage in the first place? And if the answer is no, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just be honest with yourself and what you’re looking for. Marriage isn’t guaranteed to be a happy tralala for anybody. If you can’t deal with the possibility of negative outcomes that marriage entails, there is still the option of maintaining a long-term relationship without it.
The gamble is reciprocal, though. What if something like this happened to YOU? It’s nice to know that you have a partner who has your back when shit hits the fan. But the risk is that something bad might happen to them, and then you’re in it for the long haul. But marriage isn’t something you should feel you have to do, if you can’t take that risk.
You could always write up a prenup that covers illness. Or have it in your vows. “I take you, Kelly, etc, etc, or until such time as you are really sick.”
I know we’re not getting the whole story here, but the OP comes across, to me, as seeing his fiancee less as a person and potential life partner, and more like a uterus with legs.
I want to have children with my SO who is 17 years older than I. He’s in very good health, but he’s in his 40s and starting to slow down a bit. Plus he has a rather nasty family history of cancer. So, yeah, I’m taking some chances.
I’m no peach either, frankly. I’m ADD-PI, have a history of anxiety and depression, my family has a looong sordid history of serious mental illness and general misery, I have several autoimmune problems myself (although they are currently in remission as long as I maintain some serious lifestyle changes), as well as having a sky-high risk of having a brain aneurysm at some point in my life, inherited from my dear old dad.
Life’s a crap shoot my friend. And you never know what problems your kids will have. They could be born perfectly healthy and wonderful in every way and still walk in front of a car, die of a random embolism, commit suicide, or destroy their lives with drugs. It’s scary but you can’t spend too much time obsession about what MIGHT happen.
I’d say if you love someone enough to get engaged, it seems dumb to me to throw away your relationship because she’s a little bit sickly and has had relatives with MS. Chances are you will never find a woman who does not have some health issues or a history of serious health issues in the family.
You might need to think about WHY she’s getting these infections. Diabetes? Bad hygiene? Works at day care? Doesn’t take antibiotics as prescribed? Raises confinement hogs? Smokes? Seriously, there are other things, depending on the type of infection, that could be the cause besides an autoimmune issue.
While I feel that Broomstick’s response can’t be improved upon (she really does have a knack for that), I do have a question. Were these health issues present at the beginning of your relationship? Were they always there or are they more recent developments? If it’s the former, it’s sounds to me like you may be suffering from cold feet and looking at this for the reason.
Either that, or with time the medical aspects have suddenly become very real to him and he’s thinking about them in a way he hasn’t before. I certainly had to go through a bit of “Do I really want to sign on for this?” before I married my spouse. As I said, it’s a normal thought under the circumstances, even if it’s not particularly flattering or comfortable. I came to decision back then and I haven’t regretted it, or the time I spent thinking about it.
As noted, we’re probably not getting the whole story. In fact, there’s no requirement we be told the whole story here. I answered the question as asked, without trying to second-guess the OP. He could be anything from a slimeball to a saint, but how would I know?
I didn’t answer just for him - I answered for anyone else whose had the same questions but perhaps didn’t have the gumption to ask, or who might encounter the thread in the future.
“Good health today is no guarantee of good health tomorrow.”
Amen, amen, and amen!
I’ve been married for 37 years. Truly, from the get-go, it looked like I’d be the marital representative of “sickness” in the “in sickness and in health” part of the marriage vows. I developed high blood pressure when I turned 30, started taking a statin for my cholesterol in my 40s, and I was greeted with a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes on my fiftieth birthday.
I had to give up the “sickness” crown, though, in 2005, when Hubster developed Seizure Disorder. The onset of the seizures and the side effect of the big-gun drugs he has to take to manage the seizures really turned our world upside down. Then, just for laughs, in 2007 he started showing symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.
We’re a fun bunch.
We take care of each other.
I’ll give it another 30-40 years or so, and I’ll let you know if we’re going to stick it out.
~VOW
Not knowingly, no. Had genetic counseling been commonplace 35 years ago, I can imagine my parents being sat down and told “Maybe you should consider adoption.” Vynce and I have been pretty lucky, since while we’ve inherited asthma and allergies (plus he got mom’s psoriasis, unfortunately, and I got the tooth enamel abnormalities), we’ve largely avoided the wide array of chronic health problems that plague our parents.
But they have always both been in poor health. Some of my earliest memories involve visiting them in the hospital. Since I’m the oldest, I’ve been the one who has always been leaned on for bringing them to doctor’s appointments, out-patient surgeries, and woken in the middle of the night to go to the e.r. etc…I’ve taken more time off work for their health problems than my own.
That’s enough for me. I don’t think I could handle another person’s poor health on top of that. I’d cope if I married a man whose health declined, but I can’t see getting seriously involved with someone I knew from the get-go would have chronic problems.