to expect the hospital to send DH an appointment when they said they would

[onlyjoking9329]

DH was told in january that he would need another brain scan in april, they have not sent him an appointment, and DH is taking that as a sign that he is cured, DH will not chase up the appointment and he doesn't want me to either, what do i do?

chase it up

thats what i want to do but i know DH will be angry, he is in total denial.

that's very difficult and in reality, you can't force him to go can you .

Could you make him an appointment with the GP and get the GP to sort it out? Would he listen to someone else?

no he won't go to the doctors cos he doesn't want to admit that he is ill

i think i will phone the hospital but rather than get an appointment over the phone get them to post one out to him, bit sneaky really but what else can i do.

Difficult situation, no one really wants to admit they're ill and I can understand his fear - but I'd call the hospital without him knowing if it was me.

I think, in that situation, I would call up the neurologist (yourself, when you are on your own).

Explain what you have said here - tell the neurologist he is in denial. They must see this a fair bit. Perhaps he will say the scan isn't necessary (unlikely) - maybe they have sent the appointment and dh has intercepted it at home (iyswim).

The neurologist may have some ideas for persuading him to come in - perhaps a home visit from the nurse?

Will he talk to you about it at all?

he really needs this scan to compare with the last one and to work out a treatment plan, trouble is he gets confused forgets things and mood swings so it is like walking on eggshells here, no letters have come, i always sort out the mail so i would have seen it.

no he won't often talk about it, apart from when he is really down then he talks about dying

Chase it up. Now. You can't take the risk that there might be something wrong and it's missed. My DH ignored heartburn/acid reflux for years. Even when he lost four stone in weight, he refused to go to the dr. Eventually, I made the appointment for him and it was cancer. Too late to be cured by surgery and he's currently going through chemo. If he'd gone sooner, surgery might have been an option and he'd have had a chance of a full cure instead of just buying more time with chemo. My DH was furious with me for making the appointment with the dr at first but I doubt he'd be here now if I hadn't. A lot of men seem to have this blind spot about their health and if they won't take care of themselves, we have to.

oh poor you. Yes, definitely call the neurologist. I guess the confusion is all part and parcel then.

I think I'd be tempted to have a word with your GP too because any local help (like a nurse home visit and perhaps pressure to get the appointment) will come from the GP side.

What a difficult situation you are in .

Even if you get an appointment, how will you manage to persuade him to go? Do you think seeing the letter will make him realise he needs to go in?

perhaps he would benefit from some sort of counselling onlyjoking. Or it may be that he needs some time to get used to it all. I imagine it must be very hard coping with what's going on.

we already know he has MS and a brain tumour i think part of the reason he doesn't want to go is incase he gets more bad news.
he won't do counselling, won't read anything on the subject, i am sure his denial is a part of the process but it is so hard to sit and watch.
sorry to hear that mummydoit

I sympathise with you, onlyjoking. My DH was in denial about his condition. Still won't talk about it and, like yours, won't go near the idea of counselling. It is hard to watch them bottle it all up. We get the results of a scan tomorrow to see if the chemo is working so I know all about not wanting to face things in case it's bad news. I do feel, though, that it's better to know all the facts, even if it is bad news. I hope you can get the scan for your DH and that it is good news so you can put your minds at rest.

have phoned up the consyltants sec is on holiday until the 14th, spoke to someone in the scan dept who says they have a backlog so scan won't be until july.
good luck for tomorrow mummydoit.

have owned up tp DH that i phoned the hospital, he is pleased that he won't be scanned until july

well done for telling him OJ. Perhaps the fact that it is a few months away (I hope) will give him the time and space he needs to sort out his feelings .

lets hope so, he really wants to go on holiday but the consultant told him in jan that he couldn't so we were hoping he would give us the ok to get away for a while, if we could get insurance of course.
may see if i can get him to go see the consultant anyway.

yes, that sounds like a good plan. I wonder if there's someone you could talk to about this? Does the consultant have nurses who work in his department? Perhaps they might be able to come up with some strategies as to how you deal with this all. It's awful to have to worry so especially when you can't talk to dh about it all.