agonyaunt | (no subject)

DEAR ABBY: My wife of nine years has been faking a disability for seven of them. Yes, she was injured. However, I and many others are not convinced she's in chronic pain. She doesn't take her medication, and she functions like she did before her injury. This has had a detrimental effect on my life as well as our sons' because we have to live with her lies. When confronted, she denies it, and so does her family. -- STUCK IN THE LIE

DEAR STUCK: Your wife should be examined by a pain management specialist. Whether she's in physical pain, psychological pain or faking can be determined by a medical doctor and possibly a licensed therapist who understands PTSD, depending upon how she was injured. For your sake, your sons' and hers, you owe it to yourselves to find out what the cause is.

Of course, this suggestion depends on your wife agreeing to the examination. If you are correct in your suspicions, you may want to rethink whether this is how you want to live the rest of your life.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2480100

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Why are these two even still married? Either she's a chronic liar, or he's a gaslighting turd. They'll both be happier once they split up.

If she is disabled/in chronic pain (and I tend to believe people who say they are), leaving him may not be as simple as just doing so. Even when a person appears to function pretty well, the specter of not being able to handle just daily tasks on a bad day is very real.

If her family supports her, I think she still may be better off without him, because he's either awful or abusive. (And I, too, think that it's more likely that he's wrong than that she's a liar.)

Or losing insurance if she’s on his work plan. :-(

Not loving that "many others are not convinced" i.e. this guy has discussed his wife's condition with many people and made clear he doesn't believe her.

Also, either she "functions like she did before her injury" or "we have to live with her lies" - if her lies aren't changing how she behaves, how is it affecting you?

'Many others' sounds to me like that thing when somebody informs you that 'everybody' agrees with them about some negative thing you did/do. The tribunal in his head? Or else complete strangers to whom he whinges on...

This is so lacking in relevant detail - as in 'how is she "functioning"' and what exactly is the 'detrimental effect'* - as to be very suspect. If there is medication, maybe it has unwanted side-effects? This does rather reek of 'thinks she should just make the effort' rather than admitting that there might be a genuine problem.

*Not up for marital bedtime activity?

Can't imagine why you wouldn't want to engage in marital bedtime activity with someone who thinks you are lying and faking a disability ...

Not only side-effects with medication, also the possibility that she was raised in a family where keeping going and not taking pain medication was the Way Things Are Done. I still have to be reminded that it is okay to take pain medications sometimes.

Intuitively, that doesn't seem to mesh with the stated fact that her (natal) family supports her even though her husband thinks she's a lying liar who lies.

I read this as 'supports her == believes in her pain' rather than 'believes she should take medication to manage her pain'. Because I still think of that as normal.

Hi LW!

I am a person with chronic pain,

1. Many medications have side effects. Not taking a medication does not mean you are not in pain;

2. Pain fluctuates according to [among many other factors]
- weather
- physical activity the day before, the week before
- how tight your muscles are
- what you are wearing [some clothes can aggravate pain]
- how safe or unsafe you feel
- how much sleep you have had

Seriously, if I listed all the reasons why, at one time or another, I have not taken something for pain, it would be a very long post.

HOLY SHIT. You are the worst, LW.

I can't even muster arguments here, I'm just. What a shitty, shitty person who should in no way be inflicting their terrible self on their poor spouse.

Also the answer is extremely fucking terrible. Doctors cannot examine you to tell if you're "really" in pain. They have to ask. Signed, a chronic pain sufferer who has seen a lot of doctors and taken a lot of tests.

Either way they need a divorce. One of these people is horrible. Either the LW is the monster he appears to be, or his wife is committing insurance / disability fraud (which is what I assume he means by "live with her lies").

Oh, I have so much to say about this, so much, ranging from, "taking pain medication is a super-fraught subject and I am tempted to wonder what you'd say if she did take them regularly" to "fuck you, you fucking choad," but I'll settle for one of the best thing on the subject I've read in a while:

People see the disabled/those with chronic health issues functioning, and assuming we are faking being disabled/ill. The truth is, we are often faking being well.

Well and truly said.

So very true.

What you said. - Signed, and seconded by someone born with congenital heart disease, developed an autoimmune disorder, migraines, and polycystic ovarian syndrome as a teenager, and has made it to 48 years old by only all the strategies my mother's side taught me as a child.

A thousand times this.

Want to bet that he'd be calling her an addict/pillhead/druggie if she DID take all of her prescribed med quantity?

And a lot of us can do a hell of a job masking pain, but that absolutely doesn't mean that we aren't suffering.

I kind of want to ~~waterboard~~ interrogate LW severely. There's a lot of missing information here but I know which way I bet the truth lies.

Like, what the fuck LW, and what the fuck Abby.

Possibly I will be more coherent later. Meanwhile, what the fuck?

I'm going to add in my own what the fuck.

Maybe she doesn't take the medication because it's ineffective or she's allergic. I've had many a fight with various doctors over medication they want to give me. I've had doctors who insist that my pre-existing conditions weren't real or that the doctor who gave me my diagnosis wasn't really qualified to give me that diagnosis. Or that I only got the diagnosis because it's a fad. I've had a doctor who insisted on prescribing me medication I'd had allergic or odd reactions to in the past and that my reactions weren't that bad or I made them up. (I fired that neurologist.)

I want the wife to get better doctors and more effective treatment. I also want them both to get therapy. Separately. Because clearly there's something more going on here.

*incoherent frothing in invisible disability*

And, yes, there are MANY reasons why someone might not want to take prescribed medication for pain (side effects, ineffectiveness, mental clarity, societal stigma, fear of addiction, stingy prescriptions that make you save meds for the *worst* days, etc.), which have nothing to do with whether their pain is "real."

(If I want to take one single dose of my big-guns worst-case opiate, I have to take 4 other meds to deal with the side effects, as well as dealing with 2-3 days of digestive misery. I have made one bottle last for a year or more . . . this doesn't mean that my pain isn't real, it means that the side effects are so intolerable that I will do just about anything to avoid taking it.)

I'd advise the LW's wife to divorce him, but I fear that she'll lose her health insurance :/

'Yeah, Whole Man Disposal Services? I'd like to arrange a pickup...'