to think DP's timing was ill-advised?

[ohdearlord]

I have severe endometriosis (treatment is underway to put me into the menopause and the worst is probably over) and the pain is bordering on the unbearable today. But, DP is away with work abroad and it's DD's birthday tomorrow. I have a treatment plan for acute episodes - but I'd need to stay in which won't fly today.

Texting with DP. We use the 0-10 scale so he can quickly understand where I'm at as I tend to minimise verbally and he can't judge how bad things are.

We established it had been hovering between 7-8 today despite meds. At which point he blithely and insensitively states his thumbs hurt from texting so much because he hasn't got iMessage set up on the computer over there and needs to go. And then got rather irritated when I suggested it was possibly the definition of a 1st world problem, and he could just use his phone as a hot spot.

Am I hormonal and super-sensitive, or was that just dense on his part? Or both?

[peggyundercrackers]

agree with AyeAmarok

[goodnightdarthvader1]

Sorry, his thumbs hurt from texting ON AN IPHONE? Tell the little poppit he'd better stop work immediately and nurse his poorly hands. Twat.

[ohdearlord]

That's what I am hopeless at WoodHeaven. I really struggle to even find good ways of describing it for the doctors. Best I can do is that it's a lot like that dragging, pressure kind of pain in labour. With some excruciatingly sharp pain akin to contractions. But that means nothing to him.

I'm not a crier. Never have been - for either emotional or physical stuff. I've been a single parent for a long time, away from family support, so have had to just manage and am used to it. I think I probably put up the coping mask for me as much as anyone.

When he's with me he says he can see it getting worse. I go pale, start being sick, have a tendency to faint eventually. And obviously he notices if I'm not sleeping at all.

[BalloonSlayer]

I don't think YABU.

You don't complain of sore thumbs when someone else is in complete agony FFS.

I recently had a medical procedure when I couldn't eat for nearly 48 hours beforehand. On the first night DH came in with his dinner, which he had messed up and moaned that he had overboiled his pasta or something and so it was soggy. I said (with a smile) "Fucking diddums!"

He laughed and apologised. Your DH should apologise too. Fucking diddums to him and all.

[GruntledOne]

In your shoes I'd have suggested the poor lamb use his fingers for texting if it was that difficult.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

Yanbu. He should have at least made sure you were ok and we're happy for him to go, not just, my thumbs hurt I've got to go. Er, use your index finger for a further 30 seconds then.

It would have taken less thumb work to text something sensitive like asking if she needed anything, or to say he was thinking of her than to actually type his thumbs hurt because blah blah blah. With those very thumbs.

[Yseulte]

What he's really saying is that he doesn't like texting. I don't either so I can understand.

I've got a long term chronic illness and it's never occurred to me, when someone else complains of a minor affliction to compare it to mine tbh. I'd likely win hands down any pain competition but it's not a competition is it?

Your putting up with a major annoyance, doesn't mean he can't verbalise minor annoyances surely?

[shovetheholly]

ohdear - My experience - which has been eye-opening - is that it's only a tiny, select few empathetic souls who can understand chronic pain (of any kind) without experiencing it. People often think they are being sympathetic, but then they say or do things that show that they simply do not understand the unrelenting nature of it. It's the fact that life doesn't simply return to normal that is hard for people to grasp. I don't mean this judgementally. As I am getting better, and the memory of the pain I was in is receding, I am finding I need to make an effort to remember that others are not so lucky.

I suspect that it's unrealistic to expect those who are not in our shoes to be able to walk in them toe-to-toe and heel-to-heel. You absolutely deserve practical and emotional support from your DH - but he is probably going to forget what you're going through sometimes, especially if (as you say) you're stoical and don't tend to vocalise it. It's shit for you, but it's probably not meant badly from his end, even if it's emotionally unhelpful. You do have a right to be a bit shirty with him when this happens, but proper anger is just damaging for both of you. (These kinds of issues are very much something that affects blokes too, in a different way - which is also something we don't talk about enough).

I also know for a fact that I carried a lot (and I mean a lot) of anger about the delay in my diagnosis, and the basic unfairness of illness ('why me?'), and therefore also (contradictorily!) the necessity of treatment and the isolation I felt going through it. The anger I felt about other people's inability to understand what I was going through was, in part, anger at all of this and fear at a feeling that the universe was really quite an indifferent place! It really helped me to speak to a counsellor and let the more negative ends of that emotion go. I also found it really helpful to talk through what had happened with friends after the event, because I didn't do much of this at the time. It just felt like too much to process other people's reactions on top of everything else, and (if I'm honest) I also felt embarrassed about talking it.

I'm hoping to set up a campaigning website in the near future so that no woman going through similar gynae issues has to feel completely alone, as I did.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

I've never typed "thumb" so much, either.

[Guitargirl]

Sore thumbs!?! Wtf?

I would have chucked the bloody phone at that point if I had been in a lot of pain and my DP said he had sore thumbs.

[Yseulte]

Agree with shovetheholly that unless you've actually lived it, it's very difficult for normal people to understand what it's like to live with chronic, mindnumbing pain. They literally can't imagine it.

The friend who was the most sympathetic was actually someone who a great deal iller than I. He would have every right to say 'first world problems' to me, but he never did.

[ohdearlord]

I don't know how people with chronic pain actually cope. I at least know that this treatment works, and this WILL end. And if push comes to shove I can get myself to hospital and get out of the worst of it.

When this particular patch is over I will sit down and talk to him about what it's like in the middle of one of these episodes. He does maths for a living. I'll try and find some other scales/graphs of GnRH treatments etc.

[Catanddogmake6]

I don't know if yabu but I can only empathise as I would and do respond like you. I think it is very hard if you have never had chronic pain (acute pain is different) to understand. I can see the other side of the argument but in the midst of a pain episode it is very difficult to give it much weight. The other night in pain I was wishing they would invent a way of someone else feeling and comprehending your pain. Then realised it would be very dangerous - almost the perfect form of torture.

[DoJo]

Do you think it could be that he feels awful being away and unable to help, even just by getting you a drink and being there with you, so this is a clumsy way of trying to empathise? From what you've described he is not dismissive of your pain but does find it hard to know how to offer any practical or emotional help when you are feeling awful, so unless this has changed overnight, perhaps it was just a poorly thought-out attempt to demonstrate his sympathy from a distance.

[ohdearlord]

DoJo very possibly. He is very much a helper - and very stereotypically does not cope well when there is nothing he can do.

He's also just very random though, especially when half his head is in algebraic topology (what ever the fuck that may be), and does say whatever has popped into his head.

More than likely it was just an ill-timed whinge that hit a sore nerve.

[Yseulte]

Has he ever read Hilary Mantel's account of endometriosis?

[Hellochicken]

YABU I think he should be able to express that his thumb is sore in a minor way.
I don't know what hot spot/iMessage are.
I am sore you are having so much pain today and wish you the best with future treatment.

[ohdearlord]

I shouldn't think so Yseulte. Nor have I. Will go google.

[Snowglobe1]

As someone who has bother suffered from a chronic illness and had a partner with one, it can be hard to be supportive all the time. Sometimes you don't know what to say, or you have your own stuff going on that in the normal run of things you'd need support with. If he's generally a good partner, I'd let it go.

[Snowglobe1]

*both

[Damselindestress]

YANBU. It was insensitive of him to moan about a minor issues like sore thumbs from texting when he knew you were in serious pain.

[TheClacksAreDown]

He was being a bit of an idiot. I'm currently heavily pregnant and having back pain which is pretty sore at times although pain not near your levels. My Dh can occasionally be a little self centred on health/pain matters and whilst I was using a ball against the wall to massage a particularly sore spot whilst wincing he started whining his shoulders were a bit sore from the gym and that I didn't understand. My face was enough to get a swift retraction.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

Just to point out, the OP is talking about the timing of his complaint, she has nowhere said he isn't allowed to complain or have a minor annoyance.

[ohdearlord]

Satsuki thank you - yes, it was that it came as the response to my saying the pain was between 7-8. At another point in the conversation I wouldn't have cared.

[wafflerinchief]

yanbu - he was being obtuse. Very few people can sympathize with chronic pain - i'm sorry you're having such a lousy time