I spent time alone in the hospital from internal bleeding, and my husband barely visited. He made me take an Uber home because he was playing football and then asked why I hadn't done laundry. I, a 41-year-old female, never thought I'd be posting here, but after the week I've had, I need some outside perspective.
I recently spent five days in the hospital with what turned out to be a major medical emergency, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how my husband, a 45-year-old male, of 16 years handled the situation. It's been eating at me, and I don't have anyone else to talk to about this. We are a family of four: me, my son, my daughter, and my husband.
Last Tuesday started like any other day. I woke up with this weird stabbing pain in my right side. It was intense enough that I had to sit on the edge of the bed for a few minutes before I could even stand up straight.
I tried to brush it off, popped a couple of Advil, made my son's lunch, and drove to work anyway because I had this big presentation I'd been preparing for weeks. My husband was still asleep when I left since he worked second shift. Our daughter was away on a two-week college trip with limited phone access, so it was just the three of us at home during this whole ordeal.
I didn't even tell her what happened until she got back since there was nothing she could do from thousands of miles away, and I didn't want to ruin her trip. By lunchtime, the pain had gotten so bad I couldn't even focus on my computer screen. I kept thinking it would pass, but then I got lightheaded in the middle of a meeting and had to excuse myself.
My coworker, Jenny, found me curled up in the bathroom stall, sweating through my blouse. She immediately offered to drive me to urgent care. Even though we had a deadline that afternoon, I kept telling her I just needed a minute, but she practically dragged me to her car.
The urgent care doctor took one look at me and called for an ambulance to the ER. That scared the hell out of me. My blood pressure was 82/45, which apparently is dangerously low.
I remember the doctor saying something about possible internal hemorrhage to the EMTs. They wouldn't even let me walk to the ambulance. In the ER, they hooked me up to all these machines, drew about a gallon of blood, and rushed me in for a CT scan.
That's when they found significant internal bleeding in my abdomen from what they suspected was a ruptured blood vessel near my liver. The ER doctor said they needed to monitor me closely and might need to perform emergency surgery if the bleeding didn't stop on its own. I called my husband from the ER bed at around 2:30 p.
m. Our son would need to be picked up from school at 3:15. When I explained what was happening, there was this long pause on the phone, like he was annoyed at the inconvenience.
He finally said he would pick up our 8-year-old son from school and then figure things out—no "Are you okay? " or "I'll be right there. " I spent the next six hours alone in the ER, getting poked with needles every hour, undergoing more scans, and talking to various doctors who all had different theories about what was happening to me.
A vascular surgeon came by and explained the risks of intervention versus watchful waiting. A hematologist wanted to run tests for bleeding disorders. An oncologist was called in because they were concerned about potential masses.
Nobody could figure out what caused the bleeding, which was somehow even more terrifying. By 8:00 p. m.
, I still hadn't seen or heard from my husband since that initial call. My phone was about to die, so I sent him a text asking if he was coming to the hospital. He replied that our son had homework and he needed to make dinner, so he'd try to come if there was time.
He didn't come that night. I was admitted to a hospital room around 11 p. m.
, still completely alone, wearing nothing but a thin hospital gown with my ass hanging out as the transport team wheeled me through the cold hallways. That first night was the worst. Every hour, someone came in to check my vitals and take more blood.
The nurses kept asking if I had someone coming to stay with me. Each time I said my husband might come tomorrow, they gave me this look that was somewhere between pity and concern. I kept thinking about my dad, who died from an aneurysm when I was 19.
She went from perfectly healthy to gone in 48 hours. I couldn't stop wondering if the same thing was happening to me. The next day, my husband finally showed up around 2:00 p.
m. with a change of clothes and my phone charger. He didn't bring my toothbrush or deodorant, though I'd asked for those specifically.
He stayed for exactly 22 minutes—I timed it on the hospital room clock—before saying he needed to get back to work. He missed meeting with the vascular specialist who came by 10 minutes after he left to discuss my treatment plan and potential causes for the bleeding. That doctor ordered more tests and mentioned the possibility of a rare genetic condition.
That evening, my mother-in-law called my hospital room. She said she'd only just heard I was in the hospital from my sister-in-law, who saw my Facebook post asking for good thoughts. My mother-in-law was upset that my husband hadn't told her and immediately offered to watch our son so my husband could stay with me.
I thanked her but said I'd have my husband call her. He never did. During the next four days in the hospital, my husband visited twice.
More. Each visit lasted less than 30 minutes. The first time, he brought our son, who gave me a quick hug before plopping down in the chair and playing games on his tablet the entire time.
I understand his aid in hospitals are boring, but my husband made no effort to engage him or help him interact with me. During his final visit, the attending physician came by to discuss my case. Instead of listening or asking questions about my condition, my husband kept interrupting the doctor to complain about the hospital parking fees ($8 per day, which yes, is annoying) and how much the insurance was being charged for my room.
The doctor looked so uncomfortable. After he left, my husband said, “Well, at least we've met our deductible for the year. That's it.
” That was the extent of his support during a time when doctors were telling me I could have died if I'd waited any longer to seek treatment. What bothers me most is that we have plenty of family support. My mother-in-law is retired, lives 15 minutes away, and repeatedly offered to watch our son.
My sister also offered to help, as did two of our neighbors. My husband simply chose not to arrange any child care that would allow him to stay with me. He didn't even bring me real food, even though the hospital cafeteria was right downstairs and he knows I hate hospital food.
Each night, I lay there alone, watching other patients with family members who stayed overnight, brought them food, advocated for them with nurses, or just held their hand through scary procedures. The woman in the bed next to mine had her husband there constantly. He slept in that uncomfortable recliner chair for three nights straight.
They were in their 70s, and he never left her side. When a doctor mentioned the possibility of cancer as one explanation for the unexplained bleeding they needed to rule it out, I had no one beside me to process this information. I just nodded and said I understood the plan for additional testing, then spent the night staring at the ceiling, imagining the worst.
By Saturday, the bleeding had stopped on its own, and my blood counts were slowly improving. They scheduled me for discharge on Sunday. I texted my husband on Saturday night to let him know I'd be coming home around noon the next day and would need a ride.
Sunday morning, as I was waiting for the discharge paperwork, he texted that he was in the middle of a football game with friends at the park. So it would be easier if I could just Uber. So that's what I did: Called an Uber while barely able to walk, carrying a plastic bag with my belongings.
When I arrived home, the house was a complete disaster. Dishes piled in the sink from what looked like days of meals, laundry overflowing the hamper, pizza boxes on the counter, empty soda cans everywhere. And in the middle of it all, my husband and son were playing video games on the couch.
Neither of them even stopped playing when I walked in the door. I stood there for a full minute, still wearing the hospital bracelet, holding my little bag of belongings, and neither of them even looked up. Finally, I just went to the bedroom, took a shower to wash off 5 days of hospital grime, and then went to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich because I was starving.
While I was in there, I started cleaning up a bit, despite doctor's orders to rest and avoid any exertion for 2 weeks. My husband walked in, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and walked out without saying a word. Here’s what I don’t understand: When my husband had kidney stones 3 years ago, I took a week off work, stayed at the hospital overnight in that same uncomfortable recliner, and handled everything at home.
I arranged playdates for our son, kept the house running, and still visited daily with home-cooked meals and clean clothes. When his father was hospitalized last year with heart problems, I managed our household solo for 2 weeks so he could be at his dad's bedside daily. I drove our son to and from school, handled all his activities, cooked, cleaned, and took care of everything so my husband could focus entirely on his father.
I never once complained because that’s what partners do. We renewed our vows on our 15th anniversary last year in front of 50 friends and family members. He stood there with tears in his eyes and publicly promised to stand by me in sickness and in health, for better or worse.
I believed him. But the first real test of that promise came, and he effectively left me on my own when I was at my most vulnerable. I haven't directly confronted him yet about any of this because I'm still recovering and don't have the energy for what will inevitably turn into an argument.
He's acting like everything is completely normal. This morning, he asked why I hadn't done laundry yet. When I reminded him that the doctor said no lifting over 5 lb, he just shrugged and said, “The laundry basket doesn't weigh 5 lb empty.
" My mother died of cancer, so hospitals already terrify me. I spent my teenage years watching her fade away in a hospital room, and the smell of disinfectant still triggers panic attacks sometimes. Then, just a few years later, my dad died suddenly from an aneurysm.
My husband knows this. He knows about my medical anxiety. He was with me through a miscarriage in 2012, where I completely fell apart and needed therapy afterward.
Facing this recent experience without any support from the one person who promised to be there for me has left me questioning our entire relationship. Was it always this one-sided, and I just never noticed, or did something change? That I missed Ida for expecting my husband to actually stay with me during a life-threatening medical emergency, or am I overreacting to what he might just see as practical time management?
I keep trying to see his perspective. Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing by maintaining our son's routine. Or maybe he truly believed I was fine on my own.
But I can't stop feeling like I've suddenly seen our relationship clearly for the first time, and it's nothing like what I thought it was. Edit: Wow, I didn't expect this many responses. Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment.
I'm trying to respond when I can, but still not feeling 100%. To answer some common questions: One, my mother-in-law specifically texted my husband offering to watch our son so he could stay with me. I saw the messages on his phone.
He never took her up on it or even responded to her. Two, I didn't explicitly ask him to stay longer because when I've asked for support in the past, he's made it clear it's an inconvenience. The last time I had a medical issue, severe flu, he complained about having to do everything while I was sick.
Three, no, I've never given him reason to think I would be fine alone in medical situations; actually, the opposite. He knows about my hospital anxiety. He's seen me have panic attacks in medical settings before.
Four, my doctor says I'm not supposed to lift anything over 5 lbs or do housework for at least 2 weeks while I heal. The bleeding could restart with exertion. Five, the doctors still don't know what caused the bleeding, and I have follow-up appointments with a hematologist and a vascular specialist next week.
Six, for those asking about his behavior in other aspects of our relationship, yes, there have been other occasions where I felt unsupported, but nothing this extreme. He's generally an involved father and contributes to household expenses, but emotional support has always been minimal. Seven, no, he doesn't have anxiety around hospitals or medical situations.
His father was hospitalized multiple times last year, and he had no issues staying there for hours. Update: It's been almost 4 weeks since my hospital stay, and I wanted to update everyone who commented and messaged me. First, thank you to the people who took the time to respond.
I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of comments and support. I read every single one, even though I couldn't respond to them all. I didn't expect my post to blow up like that.
Honestly, I thought maybe a few people would tell me I was being unreasonable, and then I would just try to get over it. Instead, the response made me realize that what happened wasn't normal or acceptable, and I wasn't crazy for feeling hurt and abandoned. I finally talked to my husband about how I felt during my hospital stay.
I've been putting it off because I was dreading the conversation, but it finally happened last week when we were discussing our son's upcoming dental surgery to remove an impacted tooth. I mentioned that I would need to take the day off work for his procedure, and my husband immediately questioned why I needed to be there at all. "He's just getting a tooth pulled, not major surgery," he said.
"The dentist knows what they're doing. You'd just be sitting in the waiting room wasting time. " That comment was like a match to gasoline after everything that had happened.
I told him that being there for family during medical procedures is what partners and parents do. And I pointed out the painful irony of him questioning why I would want to support our son during a procedure when he couldn't be bothered to support me during a life-threatening emergency. I got extremely angry and told him everything: from how I spent 5 days mostly alone, how I had to process scary medical information with no support, how I had to Uber home from the hospital because he was playing football with his buddies.
I told him that lying in a hospital bed while doctors discussed internal bleeding and possible cancer was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, and his absence spoke volumes about how little he valued me. His response floored me, though maybe it shouldn't have. "What exactly was I supposed to do there?
Just sit around staring at you for hours? You were being taken care of by professionals. I had work and our kid to deal with.
" I tried to explain that emotional support isn't about doing something tangible. It's about being present, having someone to talk to, someone to hold my hand during painful procedures, and having an advocate when I was too medicated or scared to think clearly. I also pointed out that if decisions about emergency surgery had been needed—which was a real possibility—he wouldn't have been there to make them.
He actually scoffed at me. Literally made a dismissive "pfft" sound and rolled his eyes. "You're being dramatic as usual," he said.
"Nothing bad happened in the end, so what's the big deal? You always make mountains out of molehills. " When I pointed out that he hadn't even arranged childcare despite multiple offers from family members, he said our son needed normalcy, not to be shuffled around to different houses.
"I was being a good father. " I asked him how he would have felt if our situations were reversed, if he had been hospitalized with a life-threatening condition and I had barely visited and then asked him to take an Uber home. He just shrugged and said, "I wouldn't have expected you to drop everything.
I'm not needy. " That's when I realized we were operating from completely different values. It wasn't just that he failed to support me; it's that he genuinely doesn't believe support during a medical crisis is necessary or important.
For him, "in sickness and in health" apparently means I'll pay part of the medical bills and maybe visit occasionally if I have nothing better to do. When I suggested that this incident made me concerned about how he'd handle future health crises, especially given my family history of aneurysm and cancer, he walked out of the room and slammed the door like a teenager having a tantrum. For the next several days, he barely spoke to me except to ask where things were or when dinner would be ready.
When I tried to revisit the conversation about a week later, he shut it down immediately, saying he was done talking about ancient history and that I needed to stop dwelling on the past. The whole experience forced me to reflect on our relationship patterns over the past 16 years. I started noticing that this wasn't isolated behavior but part of a consistent pattern I've been overlooking or excusing.
When our daughter broke her arm during a soccer game two years ago, he dropped her off at the ER and went back to work, leaving me to handle everything despite it being my busiest time at work. When I had a miscarriage between our children, he went golfing the next day because staying home wouldn't change anything. The hospital incident wasn't an anomaly; it was just so extreme that I couldn't ignore it or explain it away anymore.
It forced me to see our relationship clearly for the first time. My recovery has been slower than expected. The follow-up appointment with the vascular specialist revealed that I have a relatively rare condition called hepatic artery aneurysm, which had ruptured and caused the bleeding.
It's something I'll need to monitor for the rest of my life with regular scans, and I have a 15 to 20% chance of developing another aneurysm elsewhere. When I shared this diagnosis with my husband, he glanced up from his phone for about three seconds and said, "Well, at least insurance covered most of it," then went back to scrolling. No questions about what this means for my future health, no concern about the ongoing risks, nothing.
I've realized I've been fooling myself about the kind of partnership we have. For practical reasons, divorce isn't an option right now. My job in healthcare administration doesn't pay enough for me to support myself and two children in our expensive area, especially with my ongoing medical costs.
My son is thriving in his current school, and moving would mean uprooting him from his entire support system of teachers and specialists. My daughter is in her sophomore year at the community college nearby and still lives at home. With current housing costs, she can't afford to move out, and I don't want to disrupt her education.
My husband makes nearly three times what I do, and the reality is that I'm financially trapped for the time being. So, I've made some practical changes. One, I've updated my medical power of attorney to list my sister instead of my husband.
Two, I've started putting small amounts from each paycheck into a separate account he doesn't know about. I've also quietly started therapy on my own using my employee assistance program so it doesn't show up on our insurance. The therapist has helped me see how I've been making excuses for his behavior for years and minimizing my own needs.
One thing several commenters suggested was asking my husband to go to couples counseling. I did bring it up, and his response was predictable: "We don't need some stranger telling us how to run our marriage. That's for people with real problems.
" When I pointed out that I thought we did have real problems, he said I was creating drama and walked away. For now, I'm viewing our relationship as a co-parenting arrangement with shared housing rather than a partnership. I'm focusing on my health and my children.
I'm cordial but distant with my husband, and I no longer expect emotional support from him. I'm planning for a future where I can support myself and my children independently, even if that's several years away. The most unexpected outcome of all this has been my relationship with my mother-in-law.
After reading many comments suggesting I talk to her, I finally opened up to her about what happened. To my surprise, she wasn't shocked at all. Apparently, my husband's father was exactly the same way: emotionally unavailable and dismissive of her needs throughout their marriage.
She told me she stayed for financial reasons until my husband graduated college, then divorced his father. She said watching my situation was like seeing her own marriage play out again, and she apologized for not speaking up sooner. She even offered to loan me money if I decide to leave, though I'm not ready to take that step yet.
Last weekend was my daughter's 20th birthday. I planned a small celebration at home, and during the party, my mother-in-law pulled me aside and whispered, "You deserve better than this. Don't waste as many years as I did waiting for him to change.
" Coming from her, that hit hard. It's strange to be living in this limbo: technically married but emotionally divorced, sharing a home with someone who feels more like a roommate than a partner. It's not what I wanted or expected after 16 years of marriage and building a family together.
But pretending everything is fine would require a level of self-deception I'm no longer capable of. For those who asked about my medical recovery, I'm doing better physically. The bruising has finally faded, and I'm back at work full-time, though I still get tired easily.
I have another follow-up appointment next month, and I've already arranged for my sister to come with me instead of even asking my husband. Thank you again to everyone who took the time to comment on my original post. So many of you shared similar experiences or offered advice that helped.
Me see my situation more clearly. I didn't realize how much I needed validation; that expecting basic support during a medical crisis wasn't unreasonable. Sometimes, you need strangers on the internet to point out what should be obvious: that "in sickness and in health" shouldn't come with an asterisk and a list of exceptions.
