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Babies: 0 - 3 Months
guys, i'm seriously worried/need advice
that my FIL is going to die. he's been in the hospital for 6 months with a freakishly weird disease. in july when we saw him, he was the picture of health! this guy, 55 yrs old, was totally proactive about his health and keeping up with dr's appts. then all of a sudden in august he fell sick! well after being in the hospital and losing basically all of his muscle use, they finally figured out that he has 1) dermo myositis 2) poly myositis. the first affects the muscles, the second, the organs. it is so rare (1 in 5.5 million) that he would get this. but when you are hospitalized for a long time, you have all these other complications, he has MRSA (the 2nd time he's had it), salmonella blood poisoning, and pneumonia in BOTH lungs. Oh, hes bleeding internally also.
So this perfectly healthy guy, is now clinging to life with a trach tube (he is having a tracheostomy put in today, and they found out the bleeding is coming from his ileostomy site so they are fixing that).... and the surgery might kill him! he might not even make it through that! so it's like if you don't do the surgery he will DEF die from bleeding out, and if you do the surgery he MIGHT survive and recover (the road to recovery is like a year from now the dr's are saying and he will have to go to a rehab center).
my DH is a wreck. hes reflecting on everything that has happened in the past. he has never had the best relationship with his father, but he loves the guy, you know? its his dad! i feel like i got hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. i keep thinking what the F would I ever do if this happened to my father. its a horrible feeling, this guy was perfectly healthy and then WHAM one day, just horribly sick. I am so scared he is going to die. He is scared too, his mind is so alive, and his body is totally failing him. I haven't even been able to go see him in the hospital bc of the MRSA and bf'ing- ds's ped does not want either of us risking exposure.
this is all just so weird. and scary. dh is like in this other world right now. on top of being devastated, he's being a total ass to me, snapping about everything. which is totally not normal for him. i understand he is going through a horrible time right now, but FFS! Don't take it out on the one person who does everything to try to make your life easier! I feel so bad, I yelled at him this morning and told him if he wasn't going to be nicer to get the f away from me and go stay at his mothers house in the town where his dad is. Probably not the best thing to say, but I'm not going to be treated like crap!
how would you guys deal with this? i mean, i am just at a total loss for words! normally i'm good with stressful things like this, but i just dont feel like i have the wits about me right now dealing with a newborn and this clusterfvck with his family.
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Re: guys, i'm seriously worried/need advice
Your husband is losing his father and becoming a father all at the same time. Sit him down and talk to him about it and just listen. Then tell him you are always there to listen, but the way he's treating you is unfair.
Cut him some slack, though. My husband and I started snapping at eachother in the first months after our baby was born and we were NEVER like that before. I cannot imagine how we would have dealt with this kind of loss on top of that.
I am so sorry to hear that you and your family is going through this difficult time with your FIL.
I worked for the Muscular Dystrophy Assoc. (MDA) in their Health Care Services Dept. for almost 8 years and am quite familiar with Dermatomyositis and Polymyositis. Have you checked out www.mda.org as of yet?
My first recommendation would be to contact them and see where the closest MDA Clinic is to your FIL...if possible to have a neuromuscular trained (important term when it involves these diseases) neurologist evaluate him, if this hasn't been done already. This would ensure that your FIL has been treated by an expert in the field and is in good hands. Please look into this and see if its already been done with a local doc at the hospital, if not with a physicial associated with MDA.
These two diseases are definitely rare when it comes to MDA's neuromuscular diseases (over 43 of them with 9 being "muscular dystrophies"). It is even rarer that he is having such extreme complications to them when they are considered to be some of the least extreme diagnoses.
Please share his updates. You are in my thoughts!
samfish- you hit the nail right on the head with the becoming a father/losing his father. its gotta be a strange group of emotions he's experiencing right now. im going to talk to him tomorrow after the surgery when his dad is stabilized again.
cajun- yes i think when all is said and done, he should see someone to talk it out.
jess- thanks for the thoughts/prayers!
Your poor DH. And I'm guessing FIL won't even meet DC because of the MSRA, which I'm sure your DH is struggling with too.
Sit down with your DH during a calm moment and have a talk. Explain that you love him and you will do anything you can to support him during this hard time, however you need him to not take it out on you, especially since you are dealing with an infant and all the challenges and hormones that come with that.
GL, sorry your family is dealing with this awful situation. Try to be as patient as you can. I'm not one to put up with DH snapping at me either, but this is a very hard, emotional time for your DH so I'd bite my tongue when I can.