Husbands, appointments, and doctors

I don't make medical appointments for my husband, because I wouldn't want him doing the same to me.  

I drive him to appointments, but I stay out of the exam room, because he's a tough guy around me, and I need him to be afraid sometimes. Currently, the tough guy who says, "I can take care of this medical problem by showering more and sleeping with the window open" has run out his welcome in my house.

The tough guy not only makes up magical non-prescription solutions, he likes to have an enemy. The current enemy is the company that repaired our bathroom ceilings back in October. According to him, they released gypsum dust into the air that circulated through the house and caused all his symptoms, nothing to be done about it, except for extra magic showers. I get it, tough guy would rather hate a villain than feel God has visited a plague upon him. 

I hate tough guy, though. 

Comments

[KC]

Uuuuugh. Yes. I would like people to seek medical treatment and (generally) comply with medical treatment. Get second opinions, sure! But: when there is something that can actually be done about a problem then DO IT.

(that said, with chronic illness, people have all sorts of bonkers ideas about how to Solve Your Problem and no, I'm not doing most of those [... although I've tried a lot of them]. But: medical problems that have not yet been checked on by doctors? Get them checked on by doctors!)

[KC]

(it is possible that something could, in fact, help even if it was initially set off by gypsum dust. My mom had lung inflammation from radiation, which got worse [probably due to a respiratory virus initially?] after six months, and stayed worse for 3-4 months, and a course of steroids knocked it down to a level she can mostly cope with. So. There are options.)

(can Gary live in an AirBNB during the renovation, and then only come back after filters have been run, etc.?)

[KC]

(oh. wait. *back* in October, not "they'll be back in October". Never mind. But the point that you can sometimes medically do things even about stuff that was caused by environmental issues still stands.)

(but sigh for reading comprehension failure.)

[theQueen]

KC - What is maddening is that I can't even make any headway. He's now telling me he's had these symptoms for at least half his life and I have never noticed. Usually he's at least a little rational, but this has sent him over the edge.
Maybe he feels he can't have epilepsy and migrane and this new nonsense. I feel for him, but you still have to do battle.

[KC]

AUGH. Yeah, when the story keeps changing and is not responsive to logic... Maybe it's time to get a water-squirter to spritz him with whenever he is doing undesirable things? (now wondering if one could water-squirt either a spouse or a cat all the way to the doctor's/vet's office...)

(that said, one *can* suddenly realize that something has been a minor issue for a very, very long time and is now no longer minor, or that the thing you thought was normal to experience actually isn't. But: THEN YOU SEEK TREATMENT OPTIONS or at least mention it to a doctor.)

Does he have reasonably capable treatment for epilepsy and migraine? (there are good new treatments for migraine, if he has not poked into it recently, incidentally)

[theQueen]

KC - I think I’ll mention the migraine treatment. As for the other I actually played the birthday month card today. He isn’t having it.

[KC]

A friend has extremely severe chronic migraine (like, continual migraine since before 2020) and after a series of "well, that medication sort of reduced the migraine a bit?" and "that treatment gives a few months of partial efficacy which are totally worth it" things that were all stacked up but *still* didn't quite beat the migraine, she last year managed to cobble together a set of treatments that allowed her to get breaks from her migraine, and *this* year added a medication which is giving her longer breaks! Anyway, there are *many* things now available that were not available 5 years ago, in OTC and pharmaceutical and medical-treatment areas.

Some of the treatments are super-weird, though, but they very definitely work on her. Although maybe super-weird would be a plus rather than a minus for Gary? Anyway. Let me know if you'd like to hear about any of it.

[theQueen]

KC - I think one of those things might be Botox? Since I "survived" Botox, perhaps Gary would accept that. The problem with Gary is that his threshold for complaining is very different than his threshold for taking an aspirin which is also nowhere near his threshold for seeing a doctor.

[KC]

Yep! Botox is one of the things. There's also intranasal lidocaine (if you hit a particular spot of the sinus-y area with lidocaine, it knocks out part of the headache for a period of time; do not perform unsupervised to begin with, because if you hit a *different* spot you get 24 hours of vertigo instead; but friend is now doing it at home after substantial training); a forehead-zappy thing (the older version of the Cefaly; the new one has more lights, which is... a weird choice... for a migraine device); TVNS prescription options (vagal nerve stimulation; a different friend with migraine has an early version of a TVNS-for-migraine device - the gammacore - and loves it); the green migraine lamp (the Allay lamp); and then an absolute *ton* of new or new-ish medication options.

But yes. If there is something that alleviates your symptoms and is not in itself problematic or miserable, i do kinda feel like maybe the complaint threshold should... well... maybe like, a little complaint before you take the medication or whatever would be fine, but definitely not Complain All Day And Do Nothing About It Even Though You Totally Could. If it annoys you that the light is coming in from that window because the blind is up, and you can move the blind without that causing any issues, then: one "augh sun in the eyes" is maybe okay, and then either move the blind or absolutely stop complaining about it?

(aspirin *probably* does nothing for his migraines, though. But he should definitely see a doctor about the cough!!! And the migraines! There are also more treatments for epilepsy now, one of which may overlap TVNS-wise with migraine treatment.)

[theQueen]

KC - amen to your kinship about the complaining. It sounds as if you have been there. He and the doctor agree, if he's had 0 seizures in 30 years, don't change the meds.

[KC]

... if he's had 0 seizures, why complain??? Is it that the meds have unpleasant side effects? Or is it just that he Knows that lurking beneath the surface is, in fact epilepsy? Or that he already has to take one med (or more) but taking *more* medications feels like an imposition [... I get that sometimes, honestly]?

(but also: if it is lung inflammation: one [1!] course of steroids might fix it; that literally happened to my mother earlier this year and she was *stunned* that the cough and breathing difficulties she had had for months, and not a very small number of months, got kicked to the curb by steroids and did not come back after the course of steroids finished. I am not a doctor, and also hers was radiation-induced plus possibly respiratory-virus, not drywall dust, but: DEFINITELY worth talking to a doctor in case "knock down the inflammation and oh, hey, it stays down!" might work!)

[theQueen]

KC - yes, I think he feels he has paid the dues with the epilepsy.