MY SICK WIFE INSISTS I GIVE UP ON HER

DEAR BEL,

I HAVE been married for more than 40 years. My marriage has been a good one. We have three children, the eldest of whom was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer last year. This has caused us stress and upset.

In November last year my wife was diagnosed with a cancer (gynaecological), having been treated for breast cancer some years previously. This has added to the stress for both of us. My wife is receiving chemotherapy and radiotherapy daily.

Her oncologist is optimistic the treatment will be successful but she seems unable to accept this and has become angry and abusive. She has now refused to let me go with her to hospital and will not give me details of her prognosis.

She insists that I should leave her, although this is quite unrealistic. I have suggested that if she needs a break I will go and stay in a hotel, but this made her more angry. I am now also having health problems and have to have surgery. She knows this, but will not speak about it except to express anger at me for being unwell.

I don’t know how to get her emotions back on an even keel to make matters easier for us. PETER

This reminds me of a letter published on February 9. The reader I called ‘Althea’ was upset and angry because her terminally ill husband had,

after many rows, decided to face his end without her by his side.

I felt she was being less than empathetic to her (clearly desperate) husband and told her so. To my surprise and delight, she wrote back to thank me for my honesty.

So I suggest that although I feel sympathy for the situation your whole family is facing, I’m wondering if you are misreading the source of your wife’s anger. You seem to believe she is raging at you — a response you find upsetting and unjust.

It is easy to see how, given your own poor health, combined with the ongoing anxiety about your son as well as your wife, it would make anybody despair. Yet nowhere in your email do I find any hint that you understand your wife’s sheer terror. You describe her as being angry and abusive. But what if all that expresses her all-too-real fear of death? What if she is angry with herself because her own illness prevents her from being a supportive mother to your ill son?

What if she longs for you to be calm and strong…yet your own ‘stress’ prevents you from responding to that inarticulate need.

You say she ‘repeatedly suggests that I leave her’. Your response was to say you would stay in a hotel to give her a break. I think she would have seen your well-meaning suggestion as withdrawal. Maybe she wanted you to reassure her that nothing in the world would take you from her side as you face her treatment together.

You both need support — a good place to start would be the Irish Cancer Society (cancer.ie) where you can get information about counselling. Show her that you do understand her moods and will do everything to help her through this.