AIBU to expect DH to leave contact when I was hospitalised?

[Amioverreactinghmm]

I have been extremely unwell for the past 4 months and have been admitted to hospital for numerous blood transfusions. Im dizzy, sick and faint on a near daily basis, however I received my diagnosis yesterday and a plan is in place for my treatment going forward.

Quick backstory, my dh has a DD aged 15. He only found out about her at 6 yo and since then has fought tooth and nail to be in her life. The courts awarded him 4 hours contact (10-2) on a Saturday and Sunday every week at her aunt's house (mum's sister) as the mum refuses point blank to have any contact with my DH. She didn't want contact, it had to be forced and even then she was held in contempt for refusing a court order.

Anyway on Friday night I was really ill, sickness, temp etc. My DH left on the Saturday morning for his visit and I just got worst throughout the day. At 11.30ish I lost consciousness and my DD (20) panicked and called an ambulance and my DH.

My DH didn't leave, he stayed til his contract time was over and later as well as the sister allowed extra time as his DD was having a water fight with him in the garden so he didn't leave til 4 and didn't get to me in the hospital til the back of 5. I had to have another transfusion.

I feel he should of left when he got the call. He feels he barely gets time with his DD so will soak up every minute he gets. AIBU?

It seems completely unreasonable to call someone who was unconscious and who had very recently received a cancer diagnosis selfish for wanting their DP to come to the hospital.
This is a dc who aged 15 should be able to understand that a medical emergency with someone unconscious in hospital takes priority over a water fight.
Their parent should absolutely be able to make this assessment, this man simply doesn't appear to care for you that much, that is not something you are responsible for OP.

I hope you are feeling better
i think even if he felt it was possible that you were likely to be OK, it would have been appropriate to cut the visit short, even if he didn’t leave straight away. Perhaps he could have left his daughter at 1pm for example, to depart for hospital to check you were OK.

Plus we all know NHS seems to work a bit better if you have someone with you to advocate for you in the hospital

sometimes even loving men can be a bit useless though specially with illnesses….

No, it doesn't. She believes that her concerns are more important than his. She's allowed to believe that, but it has been repeatedly explained to her that a) he is allowed to disagree and have other things that are deeply important to him b)he had no idea if it was just another in a long series of illness issues and she had not been diagnosed at that point c) he was there by her side as soon as his other extremely pressing concern was finished.

Sick people are selfish people. She thinks her concerns are more pressing than anyone else's. She's allowed to believe that. Others disagree. She is trying tominimise his fear about losing his daughter. That won't wash either.

She will harm herself and only herself if she doesn't stop minimising his deep concern for his relationship with his daughter and let this go. He went to the hospital, he is not selfish and he had reasonable grounds for not dropping everything immediately.

And that's tht.

OP of course he should have rushed to the hospital, I can’t imagine any situation where a DH wouldn’t. His newly found child is nearly an adult not a toddler.

also strange question and not really relevant but does this mean every single weekend for both days for four hours he’s doing that? So you never get a weekend together or a holiday in all of these years? That’s completely unfair and should have been taken back to court years ago.

Also not relevant but why does he need supervised contact? I thought that’s normally only for violent exs or that sort of thing.

i am not sure I would have coped with all of that impacting my life and marriage, especially as you’ve not even met the civil. I don’t even understand why you haven’t been able to.

My take on it is that he was being significantly more selfish, he was having a prized activity and wasn't prepared in any way to modify it. One partner was significantly unwell, unconscious and taken to hospital in an ambulance.
The other was engaged in a pleasant bonding activity with a DC.
I would expect a DC to come first in an emergency every time but I would not expect every activity with a DC to come before an emergency.
I really hope that he is able to sort himself out and offer her support moving forward but the fact he is sulking suggests that he is still is behaving very selfishly.

Gosh this thread is awful, op I’m so sorry. I was In your position 8 years except mine was blood related. But I was passing out all the time and had atleast 1 transfusion a week for 6 months sometimes 2. I’m sorry but if your husband has been in his child’s life since she was 6 and she’s 15 now she’s old enough to accept that he’s got a family now and needs to spend time with them. Hell I don’t know why she’s isn’t meeting you all. You have cancer and will need chemo and surgery. I had chemo then and I can tell you it isn’t a walk in the park. My family had to be there for me, wash me, cook for me etc. your husband needs to shape up and fast. You need to be the priority right now

OP put this in AIBU because she thought everyone would tell her she was right. But even if she was (and she's not) she needs to let it go or she will only cause strife for herself.

She's framing it as life or death and he chose a water fight with his daughter over her moment of desperate need.

However, it was not life or death, he was not actually needed as she was receiving medical care, and he had no way to know if it was another health event in a long series of them, and his access to his daughter could indeed rely on him sticking to the agreed hours (despite OP dismissing this notion this is still true and more importantly he believes it to be true and sneeringly dismissing this won't change how he feels).

He wasn't pissing around at the pub or playing video games.

His relationship with and access to his child matters just as much as OP going to hospital again. He did go to the hospital when he could.

Mumsnetters tend to live in LalaLand and base their answers on simplistic versions of ethics tests or Young Adult fiction versions of life.

In real life we have to accept that when someone is very sick, or dying, we do still have to be practical and live our lives around running around after them as best we can and that doesn't always mean rushing to their side like we're living in a romance novel.

OP wants her boyfriend to choose her (understandable) wish to have him by her side when she is scared in hospital over his pressing fear that he will lose contact with his child.

This is dangerous territory. Keep the "choose me over your child" moments for when you really do need them, not for when you want them.

This is my honest advice, without tiptoeing around, and no it's not me being unkind, or brutally honest or any such faff. Just looking at things clearly.

And I have no doubt many of you will have a melt down over it.

Oh well, such is life.

I find your husband not prioritising you on this occasion quite gobsmacking really.

His daughter is 15. I wonder what she would think of him if she knew that he prioritised having a water fight in the garden over rushing to his seriously ill wife's bedside on being told she'd been rushed into hospital. Teenagers can be self-centred, but I think there's a good chance she'd have found that just as unsettling as I do.

His daughter is 15. However adversarial her mother is, she cannot control her daughter as she could when she was 6. At 15 she will be listened to. At 15, she could tell her mother that she wants to go and live with her father. Hell, she could tell her mother she wants to go and live with her aunt!

His daughter is 15, yet your husband seems to keep the details of his life out of her reach, as if she is a toddler. Does she even know his wife is seriously ill? Even if you weren't, given how many years he has been in her life I would expect her to be a little curious about his life outside of Sat/Sun 10-2.

As for your husband, the only possible thing I can think of that make's your husband's apparent unconcern for you make any sense, is that he might be so scared of losing you that he has slipped into denial, pushing away any suggestion that your illness is as serious as it is. Unhelpful and destabilising for you, but denial happens when people can't cope with a reality.

Or, and it's not as comforting as him being in denial, I have read many accounts of men with seriously-ill wives who feel most aggrieved that their household appliance is malfunctioning. Wives tend to nurse ill husbands; some husbands tend to look to rid themselves of ill wives. Wives only find out they have such a fair-weather husband when the chips are actually down and it is too late. I hope he isn't that type of husband and he is in denial, and that he gives his head a wobble before he damages your marriage irrevocably. ((hug))

Eight hours. 10-2 Saturday and Sunday. He would have been back with his DD the following day.

Except the cancer diagnosis only happened yesterday.

so now the OP is using yeaterday’s diagnosis to sway her own and other peoples opinions over what happened at the weekend. Its quite manipulative actually.

I should have said husband, not boyfriend.

Does he go every single weekend ? So you can never make plans ? It’s strange you haven’t met her.

Well since the cancer diagnosis it appears that her DH has responded by continuing to not talk to her.

They really need to have a conversation about what supporting a wife with cancer is going to look like.
It is quite possible that his twice weekly contact might be impacted sometimes. This is part of being practical.
He needs to stop treating her like a malfunctioning machine as a pp said and more like a human being that he should care for and support.

Quite a few strange bits, indeed. Not adding the cancer detail, and then leaving it easily misunderstood even then, was enough to make the whole report seem manipulative, I think.
A fifteen year old girl intent on a water pistol fight with her father? Really? Why isn’t she ever out with her friends on a Saturday? I cant imagine her being chuffed about her own weekend being dispensed with in this way. She’s not entirely a child, in a lot of ways that will be important to her.
Both days every weekend are ‘hers’ and never spent at DH’s home: importantly, is OP resentful about this absence? Seems like it.

This autistic 20 year old: no indication about what she told DH on phone, so maybe he felt need to return was less urgent?
Absolutely no point in OP letting any of this solo hospital dash fester in her mind now though, no matter who was in the wrong. She needs to move forwards, for the sake of her holistic health.

But the whole family has to get a grip on reality now, and shake things up. Weekends cant be so inflexible any more, removing DH like this with no opportunity for altering the timetable.
DD 20 and DD15 both hold fixed positions which could do with a lot of reimagining, in a practical sense.

I also don’t understand why the daughter doesn’t just say ‘I’m with dad after school Thursday, and I’m not seeing him this weekend because I’m seeing my friends, but next month he’s taking me to London for the night.’ If she is 15, no court or police or social worker is going to say anything other than ‘have a nice time’ surely? Then you can plan weekends, and he won’t feel so beholden to a specific time and place that must be adhered to or else?

The child in question is 15 and the spouse was having a medical emergency.
There was a very good sentence on another thread: you cannot expect someone to give you years of their life, love and care and always come last.
Sometimes older kids can be de-prioritized in my opinion.

To be honest if I were OP I would be more angry with the medical professionals as it seems she has been very ill for four months and yet has only just been diagnosed. That is disgraceful.

You had your grown daughter with you you weren't alone? He gets 4hours a week only to see his daughter so I understand he stayed at contact if he just left the ex could use it against him it sounds like she's the type that would

OP, I hope you're getting the rest that you need and I am sorry you had to deal with the depressing trolls on top of all else.

On the face of it, I can understand why your DH didn't rush to the hospital. This is one of those 'it's a marathon not a sprint' situations. You have been ill for months, and you were in the care of medical professionals. You were not alone - you did not have family with you, but you were not alone.

I think you two should talk. Be open about your hurt, but also really listen to his take on the situation. Being seriously ill and battling cancer is horrific and exhausting and so frightening.

He will also be exhausted and frightened, in his own way.

Some men do indeed check out when the going gets rough. That may be happening here. I hope not. I hope that you two just need to listen to each other and can find understanding.

Of course he wants to see her every weekend god men really can't win on this page can they? Here's a dad that actually does want to see his kid and people still aren't happy 😊

I imagine that's on the ex 😂 if she's barely letting him see her I can imagine she's probably said op can't it may be why contact occurs at the aunt's house

Yes I knew a woman who lost contact with her daughter for the same reason she would flake on contact and not show up then she sooked to us when her ex got full custody because of it she still moans that she did nothing

If the court will only allow supervised contact, there must be a significant backstory.

He’s not her boyfriend, he’s her husband. She has cancer, and what sound like life threatening episodes. The fact that she is receiving medical care is irrelevant. She’s on her own, in hospital and clearly from her posts she needed him there for reassurance and comfort.

The notion that she’s asking him to choose between her and his child is a ridiculous one. The child is fifteen. Old enough to decide for herself whether she sees her dad, and l’m sure had he explained the situation before he left she would have been fine with it. I can’t see any court in the land removing access because he left his child early due to his wife being blue lighted to hospital. He’s basically choosing to be with a child from a previous relationship over supporting what sounds like a very sick wife. Either that or he’s in denial about how sick OP actually. Either way it’s not OK.

OP didn’t have her daughter with her - DD called the ambulance and rang her dad, but she’s autistic and can’t deal with hospitals. And he gets eight hours contact - four hours a day, Saturday and Sunday each week. At 15 his DD will have a say in what she wants, but even so, l can’t imagine any court withdrawing contact under these circumstances