Well we've had a pretty good ride as far as the anger goes. Of course it's not all happiness and light every second, but in general it's been real good and honestly I think we have become closer than ever. We've only been married for just under 7 years so I know we're still considered newlyweds to some of you

Anyway - the anger is back. Intellectually I know it's because of how bad he feels. His counts weren't great this past Friday, his throat pain has increased dramatically, his calories are down, his fluid intake is down and the burns on his neck are starting to hurt pretty bad.

He's snapping at everything. He has read NOTHING about his cancer, NOTHING on this forum, not asked a single question about this, not taken a single note, etc. (he said I could worry about that and he would worry about our business). So now that we are more dramatically moving downhill I am becoming a little more aggressive in the at home care and I am also having to be more diligent in pushing the calories and fluids. This pisses him off - he keeps questioning me and trying to justify himself and trying to deny that he is not having the intake he previously had. I am watching his fluid intake for example and he said I had a huge glass of tea - well he actually drank about 1/3 of it. Or he'll say I had a big bowl of soup - that had to be about 1500 calories. I calculated it and it was 500. I tried to tell him that it is no failure on his part - that it is normal to not be able to get adequate nutrition during this treatment. And that he had to decide if he was willing to supplement with the high-calorie liquid supplement drinks or if he wanted to talk to the doc about a PEG. Throughout this conversation he has pretty much nothing to say. He just thinks he has to defend himself and he does that by exaggerating what he's eating and drinking. I showed him some articles about what lack of calories could do for healing and what dehydration could do re: kidney side effects from Cisplatin. That didn't seem to phase him.

He's also mad about his neck burns and won't listen to any of my suggestions. Today he wouldn't use the Silvadene cream at all. I talked to him about the potential for infection there especially with his WBC at 2.5 - didn't seem to phase him either.

This total conversation took maybe 20 minutes and actually he talked about 15% of the time - mostly nods and grunts and no reaction. Then he's walking out of the room and I said hey, will you let the dog in and he turns around (i don't think he heard me)and said can we not stop talking - I have told you my throat hurts and yet you insist on talking to me. I said did you take your breakthrough pain med - yes - 1 or 2? 1... did you take a swig of the mouthwash? no... Ok if it hurts that bad - take you damn medicine. He said I don't need this now and he just walked out of the room.

I cannot pretend to imagine what he must feel. And I know when you don't feel bad or when you are on morphine or when you hurt or when your counts are down then you have every right to feel this way. And I can get over my hurt and anger in the long run. I'll cry, write it out here, whine to a girlfriend tomorrow, etc. But how do I get him to do what he needs to do. I told him all this is because I love him and I'm not going to sit here mildly and watch him get worse in areas that we could be proactively managing. And I'm not going to sit here and let him do some permanent damage to himself.

So all this long "vent" was to close with how do I get him to do what he is supposed to do? As of right now all I know to do is to be honest tomorrow at the doctor's office. If he gets madder - then he just gets madder I guess. I know he won't divorce me and he can't stay mad forever... What do yall think?

Needless to say this is such a tough ride for me