DH gravely ill - I have no sympathy

[DeBuugs]

This is half light hearted and half a vent.

We have two young children who still wake up a lot at night. DH never does any of the nights - he got himself into a nice little position where the kids only want me. I really feel the lack of sleep creeping on me and has been for a while.

DH has been sick with cold for quite a while now. He walks around all huffing, looking like he is about to faint and when he talks to me talks supper quiet and his speech breaks up - you know where I’m going with this. Like someone acting for their boss when calling in sick 🤣.

I gave him no sympathy since he announced he had a cold (I was sick then myself) and I think we have a stand off here and he will be sulking acting like he is about to die until I acknowledge his extremely bad cold. I have no intention to do so.

If any men comment on here please say that you are a man if you don’t mind. Interested to hear male comments 😊

Surely this needs to be updated to Oodie of doom. Or is that just my husband haa

I was so ill coming back from China I was met with a wheelchair when I finally arrived back. But nooooo his mild cold and stress about MY ILLNESS is far more traumatic haha

Oodie should design one with a pattern of little signifiers of illness on them, like thermometers and bottles of cough syrup. With an "extra big pocket to store vital packets of tissues, Beechams and PS4/TV remote".

Sorry, but I just had to laugh at this.
This thread is hilarious

Even when I had COVID when pregnant I didn’t talk weakly or shuffle around looking sad. I was in bed, or managed to sit on the sofa, but I don’t see why wearing a dressing gown is “called being ill” in your book. Does a dressing gown help you feel better??

lol. My DH is the exact opposite. In 34 years of marriage he has taken 3 days off sick - 2 when he had shingles and kept passing out when he tried to get dressed for the office and 1 day off after his vasectomy. He could have a limb hanging off and he'd sellotape it on and get on the train.

He was signed off work with pneumonia once and told to stay in bed but he didn't tell me about the diagnosis until he was better and kept going into the office just the same.

The man has the constitution of an ox despite (or because of) living on Guinness and Kitkats.

it's exasperating that even when he is clearly unwell he just takes some paracetamol and soldiers on. It makes me feel guilty when I'm not well and want to take things easy.

Not sure what happened with the thread on here a couple of weeks ago?

Child had a seizure and the DH was too limp to get off the couch and call the ambulance??

😂😂

Threads like this are brutal. Imagine a load of men slagging their ill wives off, no sympathy and not helping out. If it was the other way round you’d all be on here slagging them off saying they should be looking after you and giving you sympathy.

These threads make me grateful for my DP 😂

He's ex military so he cracks on until a limb is hanging off. I mean, he's frustrating because he's so far at the opposite end of the spectrum. For example, last year he got so unwell he needed an urgent blood transfusion in hospital by the time he presented himself to A&E - he drove himself there after much nagging from me and was told he'd lost 20% of his blood volume. He was quite unwell. So yeah, he's conditioned to "crack on" in extremes of illness and it means I don't have to deal with the "dressing gown of doom" but equally, he'd drop dead before seeking medical help so that's an issue 🤦🏼‍♀️😫

I get absolute rage when my DH is ill because 99% of the time it’s me that gets ill first as I’m with the children most of the time. I’ve got 3 under 6 so I don’t have much choice but to just get on with it. When I had appendicitis I was back home from the hospital after surgery and back looking after them by the next day. I had no choice as DH couldn’t take any time off work. But when he gets ill, usually a couple of days after I’ve recovered he manages to find a way to get time off work, takes to his sick bed and turns into a Sick Person. Dressing gown of doom, Sad little voice, Shuffle of Sorrow. I’ve no patience for it at all. I point out to him that I’ve had the exact same thing a few days previously but he always thinks he’s got a worse version of what I have!!

I picked up the impression that most of the PPs will be carrying on with ordinary household duties, picking up the DP/DH's slack, caring for children other relatives with care needs. And they'd be doing this even when profoundly unwell themselves.

The OP mentioned this is half-humour, half-vent. I'm entertained by the neat turns of phrase and wish I could recall who first coined "dressing gown on doom" as it's a phenomenon so many of us recognise.

Yeah it's fucking brutal mate, wimmin eh

If I have a cold and moan about snot/cough/sinus pain mine will do a pathetic little cough as if to say "see I'm ill too."

Every time he does it now I say "oh no, are you suffering? How long until you're at death's door?" and roll my eyes at him. He at least looks a bit shame faced then. He also used to have a dressing gown of doom but it got binned

My husband juatvasked what I was laughing at. So I told him the dressing gown of doom, the shuffle, the t-rex arms and so on.
He said 'I'm not really sure what's so funny'
Naturally I laughed harder.

Oh mine is the same.. 3 year old that still wakes up and god forbid I send his Dad in… So any sign of a sniffle in my house and he takes himself to bed.. meanwhile I’ve powered through multiple illnesses whilst looking after a child and working full time! It’s the sniffing that gets me and the ‘oh god’ every time they breathe!!!!

YANBU. He has a cold not Ebola. He is perfectly capable of taking himself, some lemsip and a laptop off to bed and staying there until he feels better.

If he stops the pathetic attention seeking nonsense, I'd make him an omelette & chips for supper. If not, I'd just ignore him. Or take the dcs out without him. His mood should improve if he gets some sleep.

clearly you need a body disposal anorak....

Not quite pain related but after my three day labour and emergency c-section followed by a very sleepless night with a fractious baby who wouldn't feed, my husband appeared on the ward the next morning and announced in a small, weak voice that he was feeling really tired...

He's never been allowed to forget it.

You mean Ecolda.

He had plenty of sympathy and care but he didn't need to announce he'd been sick. He's a grown man for goodness sake.

Sounds just like my father, if mum was ill he was infinitely worse. When she had a fall and fractured bones he got himself admitted to hospital with a stroke (symptomless and fully complis mentis 😵‍💫)
I completely ignore my husband when he's ‘ill’, he seems to recover remarkably quickly . Obviously if genuinely sick I would react appropriately but he’s such a poor actor 🤷🏼‍♀️

I knew that this screenshot would come in useful.

The dressing gown of doom, the sigh of sorrow. It goes on.

Manflu is a curable condition. Send him to bed and give him a linctus that can strip paint at 50 yards. If he's really ill, he'll sleep through most of it and won't even think of watching the footie.

That was such a shocking post. The paramedics seemed to have him sussed, too.

Bliddy hell!

Mine does that, too!

It's definitely competitive whinging.

Or I get - "You know you had that really bad cold last week and you could hardly breathe and had to keep stopping to rest when you were walking? Well you've passed it to me* and I also have an earache! You didn't have an earache. You can't imagine how painful it is."

(If anyone is worried about his earache, I used the dog's Otodine to dissolve any wax build-up. I didn't tell him it was from the vet. He's fine.)

*I obviously didn't pass it on to him otherwise he wouldn't have been able to talk so much without gasping.