Hilo,

Here's another patient's perspective (you'll probably have a whole range of them here). As some of the other posters have mentioned, I felt it was really important for my husband to be able to keep working as much as possible and to pick up some of the household responsibilities that I couldn't keep up with. I was treated well before the Family Medical Leave Act came along, and frankly, it never occurred to me that he should come along on my (many) routine medical appointments. There were lots of them that would have involved plenty of downtime on his part, just sitting in waiting rooms and not learning anything new. I was still working, at least on a part time basis, and concerned about keeping my own job, and I certainly didn't want him jeopardizing his source of income as well by spending many hours of "sitting around" time that he would have had to compensate for by working well into the night later on.

What I needed most from him was emotional support, especially at the end of the day, and the push to keep up with my nutrition when I didn't want to eat or drink anything.

Cathy