Two days ago Mr. Onion woke me up very early — the sun wasn’t even up yet. He said that he’d been bitten by something in his sleep again (yes, again, more on that later). He didn’t know if it was a spider or mosquito, but his finger was very swollen. The catch? It was his ring finger (he’s been sleeping with his wedding ring on since we got married) and he couldn’t get his ring off.
Here is a picture of Mr. Onion wearing his wedding ring at our cocktail hour
I got out of bed very quickly and called the answering service for our doctor. She asked me for some basic information so she could page Mr. Onion’s doctor and all of a sudden I started slurring my words and she had to ask me to repeat myself. I got very light headed, started sweating and almost passed out. It was really scary. Mr. Onion got me some water and I sat down.
I think I had a panic attack because I was so worried about Mr. Onion. I guess you really know you love someone and put their health and needs before your own when your own body shuts down at the thought of something bad happening to the other! We went to the ER and he is going to be OK in a day or two, but wow! One of the ER doctors suggested we have the ring cut off and I was not having it — it hasn’t even been on his hand for a month yet!
A similar thing happened about a week or two before our wedding (although no ring to complicate things). He was bitten, again in his sleep, on his finger and near his eye. The bummer this time was a) it had never happened before so it was really scary and b) his eye was almost swollen shut. He asked me if I’d still marry him if his eye was still “hideous and swollen shut” and I said “Of course I would — it would just be a bummer to have hired such a nice photographer!”
It got me thinking — what scary moments have you been through with your fiance or husband. Have you had any small or large health issues? How did you handle it? Did it make you feel more connected to be able to help each other through and take care of each other? I’m sure many of you have much more serious issues than a seriously swollen eye or finger and others might be comforted or inspired to hear your stories if you’re comfortable sharing.
We have been through a somewhat scary health situation. Last year in March, my fiance (then boyfriend) saw a truck hit a pedestrian. Nobody appeared to be running to help her, and my fiance is trained in emergency first aid, so he rushed to see if she was okay. The girl who got hit was lying on her back on the ground and bleeding badly from the back of her head, and before the emergency crews arrived, she started to wake up. She was in shock and was convinced that she was fine, and tried to get up and walk away. My fiance knew that he had to keep her immobile because she was bleeding so badly, and the girl was so confused she wouldn’t listen to him so the only way to hold her still was to hold her head still with his bare hands. He had a small cut on his hand, and he got his hands covered in her blood.
As a result, he had to get tested for all diseases that could be passed by blood, one of which is HIV. As you may know, it takes 6 months since exposure before you can be sure that HIV is not present, so this took a 6-month toll on our relationship. Our life in the bedroom was not the same for that period of time and we were both very unhappy and he felt guilty for imposing this on me even though I didn’t blame him - he did what he had to do to save that girl.
Apparently he’d also been intending on proposing to me at the time that the accident happened but then wanted to wait till the test results came back because if by chance he had turned out to be HIV positive, he wouldn’t have married me because he would have wanted to protect me from the disease and from losing him. (I have mixed feelings about this) So we ended up delaying our engagement several months because of this incident.
However, finally after 6 months of waiting and worrying, his test results came back negative. He’s fine and we’re fine, and looking forward to getting married 
It was just a bump along the road in our relationship.
Once, my fiance suddenly had extreme stomach pains after dinner. We had exactly the same food (it was Indian buffet) but I was alright. Now, my husband tends to grin and ignore any discomfort so when he said it was terribly painful, I got worried. We went to hospital and he had to be hospitalised for a week of tests. He was also given morphine to take off his pain. To this day, we do not know what brought on the pain. At the time, I was really scared. We were students in a foreign land and I had only just started going out with this guy! All I could think of was, “How can I tell his family (whom I’ve not met) if anything happens?”!!
It’s not easy when someone close to you have any health issues.
Btw, I’m a longtime lurker of Weddingbee and I think it’s a wonderful resource for brides. You are all very creative and I’ve learnt so much from you!
When my fiance and I started dating, I was in the middle of treatment for leukemia. Contrary to your thoughts above, it really started to drive us apart. It’s hard enough having cancer at 19 years of age while away at college living far from any family members, but the last thing I wanted to do was involve my fiance (obviously, boyfriend at the time) because my fear was that I would rely on him to get through day-to-day life, and what if we broke up? I’m a very realistic, practical person, and I know that most people do not meet their future spouses by 19, so I didn’t know if he would be around forever. He wanted to help, and I refused to let him, because I didn’t want to have to cope with breaking up with him AND being left stranded when it came to dealing with the cancer.
Fast-forward 5 years and we’re getting married, but I still try to push him away at times. I think I just separate my “cancer life” from my “real life” and don’t like to mingle the two. I’m coming up on 1 year of remission and have to go back to the doctor for all my follow-ups, and really just want to go alone and do this on my own. My fiance, however, keeps arguing that we are a unit now and he needs to be with me, and is making me feel a bit smothered.
That said, if I developed another form of cancer down the road, I would want him to be by my side. I think the issue just stems from the fact that I dealt with leukemia at 2 years, 13 years, and 19 years without him, and I’d rather just leave those years of my life behind me.
Laura S-
Reading your comment above, we went through the same thing again with my fiance. He got a needle prick while doing surgery, and had to wait the 6 months with the regular HIV testing. It never affected us or our relationship though — we knew the chances of him having anything were slim-to-none, and after dealing with my cancer issue, we could survive through whatever issue he might have himself.
This isn’t a post I’d normally respond to, but sometimes sharing these moments helps you feel better about what you’ve been through.
The scariest health issue we had was a miscarriage. It’s even strange typing that word….like it doesn’t quite fit me. We were so excited about those little blue lines, and I took extra good care of myself. That would certainly make the difference right? That we wanted to baby and we were ready? But it doesn’t work that way. I started bleeding and a test confirmed it…there was no heartbeat. We were going to lose the baby. I don’t know what I would have done without him. What I went though wasn’t a typical miscarriage, and I had to go through labor to get rid of it. He was there every moment, being my anchor.
We grew closer even though I couldn’t even imagine being more than were already were, and it’s because of these life tests that we got to see how truly there we are for each other. I wish I could express how much that means to me.
It seems kind of cruel to have to go through something so harsh to reach that level of bonding. I can’t say that I’d ever say it was worth it, but I cherish it because it’s there.
I’ve also learned that it was much easier being the person who hurts than being the person who watches.
Mr. Licorice is a pilot, and over a year ago, the single engine plane he was flying decided not to work. He crashed, but luckily, he walked away just fine and due to his quick thinking, there wasn’t a scratch on the plane, either. We actually don’t talk about it too much because it was so traumatic. I know it was a fluke, freak accident (most planes don’t just stop working), so I hope and pray it doesn’t happen again.
My guy got burned on the job last week. (we are less than a month from the wedding). It has added extra stress to this stressful time.. but he’s going to be ok, and his ring finger wasn’t burned. He’s a firefighter and a welder so, he’s been hurt quite a few times.
My fiance had a seizure last Saturday - it was the most horrifying moment of my life. He had gone into work for “Inventory Day” and while I was napping at home, his bosses called me. Someone came and rushed me to the hospital and I was only okay when I saw that albeit a little shaken and scared, he was okay too. Luckily, the neurologist we were referred to by the ER doctor said that it was situational. I, too, hope and pray that something like this never happens again.
I normally don’t post…but I know exactly what you went though.
About a year and a half ago my FI had sharp pains in his back. Went to the hospital to find out that his right kidney failed….they had to remove it. We obviously went for a second, thrid and forth opinion. The second doctor referred us to the thrid doctor, who ended up being the best urlgoist in NYC. He suggested we do nothing, as it was a natural kidney failure and his body is compensating by using his left kideny. The doctor also said it may be more serious when it gets older….but not now. Therefore, it did not needed to be removed.
Since then, FI has had several complications with sharp pains in this lower extermities, protatate inflammations and overall discomfort. He saw his urolgist about 5-7 this year alone. He is going to be on medication, a stict diet of no alcohol, caffinee and tabacco all his life. It really sucks but some days are better then others.
What upsets me even more is that there is nothing I can do for him. I hate to see him in pain and I wish I could take his pain away. I get paranoid about his health and think about “what if” scenarios…It’s just hard trying to live life when you know you have something pretty serious like think lurking over your head.
So I decided, when we are 50, I will give him my kidney when he needs one. But until then, we are trying not to think about it too much.
Mine is a little different from just a scary health issure, but I figured it would go here. It’s kind of a situation we put ourselves in. See, my fiance is a racecar driver, so every Saturday night, when he straps into that car, anything can happen.
The scariest experience was one night, he was involved in a wreck, and his entire car burst into flames. That 7 seconds it took him to get out of his car felt like 7 hours to me.
The probabilty of an accident is extremely high, and going those speeds, nothing is out of the question. It’s (wrecking/getting hurt) not something we really talk about, but the hugs are always a little tighter and a little longer before he climbs in.
I have Crohn’s disease, and for the last year I’ve been in a pretty awful flare. FH had to learn how to inject me with my immunosupressant medication (in my stomach! Not fun!). He’s been an angel, but it’s been really scary to be sick for over ten months. I don’t know what I would do without him. He even holds me as I cry over my hair (it’s falling out in clumps).
Having someone by your side makes almost anything bearable.
While mine was scary at the time, it seems a bit more humorous now and in light of some of these other stories, but I’ll share it anyway.
In our first year of dating, I was in DC visiting my sister. I stayed in her guest bedroom in the finished basement and woke up one morning in total pain in my right lower abdomen. Instead of calling up to my sister, I picked up my cell phone and called my husband (then boyfriend). His mom’s a nurse and once I described where the pain was, he ordered me upstairs to tell my sister to get me to the ER.
Once there, they took a pregnancy test to rule out 1) fallopian pregnancy and 2) whether or not I could be given pain meds as you can’t give morphine to a pregnant woman. I wasn’t pregnant and so they shot me up with morphine. They were scheduling me for a CT and a couple of other tests so I had a bit of “down time” in the ER with my sister and nephew (who was an infant at the time) and figured I should call and give him an update. What I said was “Well, they did a pregnancy test….” and then the morphine kicked in and I just sort of went into la-la-land and didn’t say anything. My guy was at work at this point and all he heard was silence. Coworkers have since told him that they’ve never seen the color drain out of him so fast! Finally he said “AND???!!” and that snapped me out of it to let him know we weren’t pregnant in the first 4 months of dating…
Long story short it ended up being a kidney stone, although they were close to cutting me open for an appendectomy before they saw the tiny little stone on the scan.
My now-fiance and I have been together since high school, and when I was in my senior year of HS he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. We had a long talk and he said he’d totally understand if I wanted to break up with him because of his cancer- of course, my response was, “Are you crazy? I’m not going to leave you at the time when you need someone around the most!” He went through 7 months of chemo and radiation and has now been in remission for almost six years, but I still worry all the time about the cancer coming back- not because I’d want to leave him, but because I don’t want to lose him.
That was the big scary thing- then this last year (I’m a medical student) he wakes me up in the middle of the night saying his stomach really hurts. After a few times of rolling over, mumbling at him and going back to sleep, I finally wake up and do an exam on him- he’s got all the classic signs for appendicitis. Thankfully due to my fine medical skillz we caught it early and he was fine after surgery… but still not fun.
And I still stay with him!
A couple of days after we moved in together - and moved towns! - my fiance had a really bad case of gastro-entiritis so I found myself driving him at 10pm, in the dark, to the hospital (we had no idea where it was!). As he lay in emergency on a drip, he asked me to marry him. I blame the pain meds! That was the first time… The second time I said yes!
It’s funny, but you really learn a lot about yourself (and your husband or significant other) when you when dealing with a crisis, especially a medical one. I was admitted into the hospital last month, when it was discovered that the shortness of breath I had been suffering from for the last two weeks was not just a chest cold, but a massive pulmonary embolism in both my lungs — probably a result of fractures in my pelvis and foot suffered two years ago and taking birth control pills. If not for the urging of my husband to go see a doctor sooner rather than later (I had a general physical scheduled for 3 weeks in the future), I might not be around today to write this comment. Thankfully I also realized that short-shrifting my health was a disservice to the both of us (hey, I’m no longer just in this for myself, we’re married and in this life as a team), and so I listened to my hero husband.
Congratulations on surviving your moment of crisis, Mrs. Onion. Know that it probably won’t be the last in your life together, but that you will both do your best whatever comes your way. And your relationship will be stronger for having gone through both the good and not so good times together.
I almost never met my FI. He has a rare genetic disease called Gaucher’s Disease. To put it in regular English, his body doesn’t produce an enzyme. Without that enzyme, stuff builds up in your cells and kills them, mainly liver, kidney, and bone marrow cells. He had his last big attack when he was fifteen. Because of being in the hospital and laying down for so long, he developed a pulmonary embolism in his lung. He was in a coma for two days and miraculously survived.
Thankfully he hasn’t had any bad problems since then, but we both know that it’s possible. As far as we know, I am not a carrier for the disease (I haven’t been tested yet). If I’m not a carrier, then all our children will be carriers. If I am a carrier, then there is a 75% chance that our children will have the disease. It’s very unlikely that I am a carrier, though, because it is passed down through the blood line of a certain Jewish tribe, and as far as my family knows we have no Jewish blood.
Nopushover, I’m so glad you went to the doctor!
My FI and have had our medical problems. I don’t feel completely comfortable sharing (due to the fact that I haven’t exactly told many people) but all I can say is that it’s brought us closer and I know that no other guy would have stuck by my side through everything. When we do get married (been dating 5 years, engaged 2 — due to the illness) I know our families will be celebrating our love that has endured us these past few years. In sickness and in health to be sure!
The day we were scheduled to visit our wedding venue, I got a call from my husband (then fiancee) saying he might be having a stroke. He couldn’t move half his face. I nearly fainted (I had lost my college sweetheart to Leukemia and fear something similar happening to my husband). Turns out my husband had a case of Bell’s Palsy, which went away in about a month (although the paralysis of Bell’s Palsy can stay around for years, so we count our blessings).
Something like this does test your relationship in new ways–it’s amazing to know what lengths you’ll go to in order to see your husband/fiancee/etc healthy and well.
EEEK! Check your mattress for bedbugs. They are taking over the world.
Sorry this is so long…
Last summer my fiance and I went to another state to work as counselors at a summer camp. The first 10 days were just training so there were no kids yet. About 4 days into training, all the staff had to go through a swim test to make sure we could all swim properly for the pool and lake. It was just down and back the length of the pool. Most of us were a little out of breath due to being out of shape so I didn’t think much at first of my fiance’s ragged breathing when he got out from his lap.
About ten minutes later, when everyone else seemed to be breathing normally, he was still having a hard time breathing and couldn’t focus on anything i was saying. One other counselor (a guy from England that I had known only 4 days) helped me talk to my fiance to keep him aware. His heart was still beating excessively 30 minutes after getting out of the pool. The scariest part was when he looked at me and told me he didn’t want to die. He thought he was having a heart attack. It wasn’t until about 40 minutes after he got out of the pool that the camp got an ambulance there. That was my first time riding in an ambulance. (Not to mention my terror at having to call his mother and tell her what was going on when I didn’t know what was happening myself.)
By the time we got to the hospital, my fiance’s heart rate had returned to normal and they couldn’t find anything wrong even tho they did many tests and scans. After returning to the camp, he started having little episodes about 10-15 minutes, where his heart rate would skyrocket and he had to sit down or he would get dizzy and he couldn’t breath properly.
We decided that he needed to go home and have it looked into more deeply. So his dad flew out and then drove him back to his parents in my fiance’s truck, since it wasn’t safe for him to drive. He was in and out of the hospital all summer. They originally mis-diagnosed him with an anxiety disorder. But the meds they put him on did nothing to help him.
Towards the end of the summer, they gave him a monitor he could take home with him to get a reading, since every time he went to the hospital, by the time he got there, his heart was fine. When he sent in the first reading, the doctor called and told him to get to the ER as soon as possible. His heart rate was off the charts.
Turns out he had some kind of super-ventricular tachycardia. Basically, the heart sends out pulses that go through the different chambers of the heart. He had some extra path that occasionally the pulses would go through and recirculate instead of dissipating, causing the heart to beat overtime.
The problem was fixed with surgery and he should never have to deal with this problem ever again, but the doctors said that if they hadn’t found out what was wrong and his heart had kept going the way it was, he wouldn’t have made it through another three years! That was a scary thought.
After the heart surgery he told me he never knew that you weren’t supposed to always feel your heartbeat. A normal heart beat felt strange to him because his had always been off, just never so severe as the episodes last summer.
Then to top off 2006, he had a blood clot in the tissue of his leg post-surgery. Since it was in the tissue, not the veins, it was easier to treat. It set back his total recovery time about a week and he was on bed rest for that week, but otherwise, that wasn’t too bad considering.
THEN he was having some really bad stomach pain in early november. He had a friend drive him to the clinic at the university since I had to go to work. I got a text half way through work saying he is going into surgery! Apparently he had appendicitis. Thankfully he hadn’t eaten anything that day and they were able to operate that night. The doctors said if they had waited until morning, his appendix probably would have burst, making it much worse.
So 2006 wasn’t really the best year for me and my fiance, but thankfully, he is doing much better. I told him that he’s used up his limit for trips to the hospital. I was there for both his surgeries and stayed overnight with him in the hospital, so I told him we aren’t going back until years from now when I’m pregnant and we have a happy reason to be in a hospital.
Thank you all sooo much for sharing your stories. You’re all very brave and your fiances and husbands are VERY lucky to have you!
Keep the stories coming — I’m sure they’ll provide strength to others going through similar situations.
Miss Onion, NYC/Burlington, VT
Age and Occupation: 26, PR & Marketing and Jazz Singer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Data Analyst
Engagement Date: April 2, 2006
Wedding Date: September 2007
Blogging Since: July 11, 2007
Venue: Restaurant in Burlington
About Me: I didn't think I'd be "that girl," but I am having so much fun planning our wedding (mostly by myself). I'm a PR and Marketing Director for a major jazz festival and camp by day, and by night, a romantic jazz singer and bride-to-be! I hope all my research can help other brides in their planning.
Okay, I just have to say WOW! Your ring and wedding band are AMAZING! So gorgeous! Sorry, a bit off topic, I know, but I couldn’t help but say something.