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Health

Spouse is disappointed in family's reaction to cancer

By Amy Dickinson, Tribune Content Agency on

Dear Amy: Recently, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. We began daily radiation and weekly chemotherapy treatments. We are both self-employed, and so we have some flexibility in our scheduling, but it has been a lot to handle.

My wife's mother and her family have been enormously supportive. We have lots of friends who are there for us, too.

My family, however, has been less so. In fact, they have not helped at all. They don't even text me to find out how we are doing.

I don't require much, but a weekly text just to send love and support would be nice. Even better would be if they offered to help.

Last week my siblings spent the better part of two days going back and forth over dozens of group texts, discussing which cars we'd had growing up.

I kept thinking to myself, how is it that they can send dozens of texts about something as trivial as what kind of cars we had during our childhood, but cannot reach out and say, "Hey, Sis, I'm thinking about you."

 

I really want to leave this anger behind, and if that means letting go of these relationships, then I suppose I can do that.

My guess is that I am in a hyper-sensitive state and don't want to lash out during this phase.

Am I being unreasonable?

-- Upset Spouse

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