When H got dengue

In sickness and in health goes the vow, but when a spouse falls ill, the marriage gets complicated.

MY wifely duties were put to a test last week when H came down with dengue fever.

I tried my best to be as caring as I could, or as I imagined a wife should. I’m not sure I passed the test. It was the first time H had fallen sick since we got married, and so it became yet another lesson in what married life is about.

We thought he had the flu at first.

He said he was feeling unwell the Wednesday before, but seemed okay on Thursday and went to work.

I’d assumed he was fine on Friday, too.

I woke up at 7.30am and, as has become a habit, reached for my ipad to play a few rounds of Scramble, that very addictive word game.

He suddenly appeared at my bedroom door, looking like something the cat dragged in.

What’s wrong with you, I asked. You look terrible. And aren’t you supposed to be at work?

Flu, he muttered, and shuffled back to his bedroom. My first guilty pang hit. That’s what happens when a woman and her husband sleep in separate rooms, I said to myself.

If I had been a better wife, I would have long ago overcome my horror of sleeping in an air-con room (which he has to, because of the heat not to mention mosquitoes). And if I was sleeping with him, I would have known that he had come down with the flu.

But that was the generous part of me thinking. A nasty little thought also flitted throughmy head: Thank goodness we don’t sleep together or I’d have caught the flu bug from him.

I set aside my Scramble game, jumped out of bed and swung into wifely action. I started fussing. I fished out a thermometer, found that his temperature was 38.4°C and rushed to get him an icepack.

I asked him if he wanted to see a doctor and he nodded. Problem was, I had a meeting at the office at 9.45am followed by another at 11am, and the neighbourhood doctor would be in only at 10. He said he’d walk to the clinic. Looking at his winded face, I knew I couldn’t let him do that.

Let me drive you there at least, I said helpfully. Then you can walk back home.

The GP said it was probably the flu.

When I got home near midnight that Friday, he was shivering and his temperature had shot up to 39.4°C.

This time, I was truly worried. I sponged him and refilled the icepack. The temperature went down to 39.2°C and we went to sleep (in separate rooms).

And so our weekend went by, with him feeling horribly sick and me trying to be as solicitous as I could. I checked on him often and kept sticking the thermometer into his mouth till he protested.

We had to cancel a lunch appointment with a friend, a badminton game and couldn’t go for yoga.

He didn’t have to work on Monday but went in on Tuesday. But he was still feeling lousy and went to the GP that night.

The doctor said he had probably caught dengue as a measleslike rash had appeared on his thighs (so much for an air-con room protecting him from mosquitoes). He advised him to go to an A&E to get a blood test.

I went home to pick him up and we got to the hospital at 10.30pm. The test was positive and, worse, his blood platelets count was very low. He had to be admitted.

By the time we got the paperwork done and he was safely ensconced in his room, it was past 1am. I slept at 2am that day.

Being ill is exhausting, not only for the person who’s sick but also for those caring for him.

In most married couples, that responsibility falls on the healthy spouse. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that one – unspoken – reason people marry is to increase the chances of someone looking after them should they fall ill.

Role model

I had a first-hand insight of that when my mother looked after my father after he had, first, a serious hip operation, then a stroke that left him bedridden for six years.

I don’t know how other couples do it, but my mother is my role model when it comes to how a woman should look after her husband when he’s sick.

She approached my father’s illness calmly and stoically and did everything for him.

His meals were nicely set out on trays and served to him in his bedroom. She bathed him, cut his hair, spent time with him and, when he got worse, used a machine to suck out his phlegm and even learnt to insert his feeding tube.

It helped that he was a considerate and cheerful patient. Still, when he died, she was exhausted from the long years of tending to him.

I’m not sure if I can live up to her high standards in care-giving should H fall seriously ill.

For sure, the strength of a marriage is sorely tested when one spouse is sick.

Life as you had known it is suddenly turned upside down and all sorts of negative feelings will surface – anger, fear, guilt, insecurity, resentment, helplessness – in both spouses.

Wives, apparently, have it worse.

An American study of about 500 brain tumour and multiple sclerosis patients found that female patients were more likely to be abandoned by their spouses than male patients.

When the man became ill, only 3% saw the end of a marriage. But among women, about 21% ended up separated or divorced.

The study found that if couples were happy before the diagnosis, men were more likely to leave their wives who became seriously ill. If they were already estranged, women were less likely to proceed with a divorce if their husbands fell ill.

H’s platelets count dropped further on Wednesday, but started inching up on Friday afternoon and he could be discharged.

In the three days he spent in hospital, I visited him a total of just once.

I was bogged down with work and couldn’t squeeze the time to go down. He said it was okay and that there wasn’t much I could do in the hospital anyway.

He even discharged himself and made his own way home in a taxi.

Am I a bad wife, I asked him, feeling guilty yet relieved at being let off the hook in having to tend to him too much.

Not at all, he said. You were great.

I can only hope that when it’s my turn to be in hospital, he will look after me better than I had him. — The Sunday Times / Asia News Network