Love, marriage, and disability -- four ways to keep your relationship strong despite chronic pain and disability
Published February 19, 2012 | FoxNews.com
More than twenty-five years ago, I married my wife shortly after she survived a horrific car accident. To date she has endured more than seventy operations (fifty on my watch, so far), the amputation of both legs, and nearly $9 million dollars in medical bills. Through this continuing ordeal, we have had countless hospital stays during birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays …including Valentine’s Day.
Raising a family and keeping love alive in a marriage with a spouse who is constantly sick or in severe pain is an extreme challenge; one with many casualties.
The divorce rate in couples with a disability in the family hovers around 90% and relationships with a disability or chronic medical condition face significant pressures on the love holding the marriage together.
Relationships that endure through these types of challenges seem to all share four characteristics which allow love to transcend the brutal circumstances.
1. Separate the person from the painHow do you keep love and passion thriving in a chronic medical catastrophe where the suffering is not limited to a short-term illness or injury?
Different from Alzheimer’s or dementia, marriages impacted by one spouse living with a broken or diseased body while retaining complete cognitive awareness encounter a different set of emotional trials for the marriage. The challenge for the healthy spouse is to maneuver through the minefield of medical issues, attending to each of them, but never losing sight of the suffering person’s heart.
The challenge for the sick or injured spouse, even from a wheelchair or while in severe chronic pain, is to recognize that matters of the heart, though often less demanding, are just as important (if not more so) as the needs of the body.
2. Keep living, even while hurting It is appropriate to acknowledge our hurts, but, after more than a quarter century of living with someone who daily suffers from severe chronic pain, I have witnessed the difference between “living with pain” versus “living while in pain.”
As Christ hung on the cross in excruciating pain; (the word “excruciating” is a Roman word invented to describe the horrific pain of crucifixion), He acknowledged His own agony, but never wavered from the relationship between Himself and His Father, His mother, the thief dying next to Him …and even those who crucified Him. He lived while in pain.
To love someone IS to live …even while burdened with extreme agony and challenges.
3. Love even while hurting Everyone hurts at some point; even super models and professional athletes suffer physically at times. Using sickness or feeling bad as an excuse to disconnect from the needs of close relationships sets a horrible and destructive precedent that seems to say, “I can be focused only on me whenever I feel bad.”
Experience teaches me that life-changing and transcending love abounds when we choose to turn our eyes to others …particularly (and peculiarly) while carrying great burdens ourselves.
We cannot escape the relentless difficulties in this life; we do however, have the opportunity to embrace each other, even while in pain, and discover love …and romance, are not dependent on external circumstances, but instead reside solely in the heart. As the wonderful Rodgers and Hart song stated so well:
My romance doesn’t have to have a moon in the skyMy romance doesn’t need a blue lagoon standing by;No month of May, no twinkling stars,No hide away, no soft guitars.My romance doesn’t need a castle rising in Spain,Nor a dance to a constantly surprising refrain.Wide awake, I can make my most fantastic dreams come true.My romance doesn’t need a thing but you.
4. See the heart, not "the chart"For caregivers I offer this advice: if the love of your life struggles with chronic disease or injury, take a moment to see beyond the medical chart, the broken body and the pain-filled eyes…and connect to the heart of the extraordinary person who captured your heart.
And for those suffering, look deeply into the eyes of the weary soul who looks after you, quietly hold hands together, and bask in the love you both share; a love that is defying the odds.
Peter W. Rosenberger is the president of Standing With Hope, the non-profit prosthetic limb outreach organization that he and his wife, Gracie, founded in 2002. He is also the author of numerous articles and served as the writer for his wife’s book, "Gracie: Standing With Hope" (Liberty University Press 2010). Peter is currently working on his next book in which he offers encouragement and practical help to caregivers of chronically ill individuals.
I am indeed grateful, and feel extremely blessed, to have a husband who has never made me feel less for the difficulties my health issues have brought to our lives. He has never complained of the expense (usually close to, and once exceeding, $10,000 per year) and has promised me over and over that he does not care about the cost as long as all that is necessary has been done for me. He reminds me to take my medications, picks up prescriptions on the way home from work when I forget to, He kindly lets me know when he suspects I may need a change of medications. In fact, he almost always notices when something is not working well enough before I do (especially with depression medications).
When we were dating I remember he told me once that he needed to change jobs. He was working construction and he really enjoyed his work. I asked him why, because I wanted him to do what he enjoyed. His answer was "because I'm in love with a girl who has some medical problems. It is extremely rare to have a construction job that provides medical benefits." He continued working construction, but by the time we had been married for a year he had left his construction job and we were doing all we could to find a career for him that would address his own needs (which include accommodating ADHD) and which he could qualify for, despite not having a college degree.
After years of working and searching we finally ended with the job he has now. It was a long search and involved a lot of failures and difficulty. He went back to college, but difficult pregnancies made it very hard to have him gone all day to full time work and full time school. Finally after a long path he got his job and has quickly worked up to a position he is very good at and in some ways uniquely qualified for, as an individual who understands and enjoys web programming but also is a competent manager and works well with clients. In terms of health issues, he also has very good health insurance. And ever more important in some ways: he has an understanding boss. I know that any time on any day if I really need his help, I will have it. His boss and the others he works with would all be very understanding of my needs. Usually I do not need on-the-spot care, but there have been a few times when it was critical due to physical or emotional issues I couldn't not handle alone. Having that support from his work has been invaluable.
I am glad that we have enjoyed life together. When we were told I had cancer a couple of years ago we worried and researched, but mostly we joked. I'm afraid we may have shocked some people by the silly cancer jokes we told about our specific situation. He sat by my bed every day of the week I was in the hospital after open abdominal surgery. He gently lay me back in bed after each walk around the surgery unit. He brushed my hair and made me do everything the nurses told me to do. My memories of that time are very hazy, thanks to the huge amounts of pain mediation I was on, but those things I remember. It was a tender time.
One last point regarding love and chronic pain: My husband never complains about anything that I have no control over. When my pain is such that I cannot get the dishes done he gets out the paper plates and carries on. When I cannot emotionally handle making a phone call he either does it or sits and waits patiently while I gather the guts to do it. Sometimes he asks to see if I do have control over something, but if I cannot fix it, he accepts it along with everything else. I do work to make the burden light on him, but there is such a lot of it that it is still a large load. It has been a partnership to manage my health and I'm glad to have such a good teammate.
No comments:
Post a Comment