He is 20 years older than me, but has COPD which is getting worse, needs a hip replacement. He also needs back surgery. He continues to smoke, and the doctors won't do surgery because of that. I honestly believe he is very depressed. I want to help him but I am getting very tired of trying to help someone who won't help himself. He doesn't get that by not helping himself he is really harming our marriage. Shows that he doesn't care enough about our marriage or me to take care of himself. He is beginning to show signs of dementia, or it could be the depression. He is 76 years old and could still have a much better quality of life if he would try. I really need some advice on how to get through to him. I have thought of doing kind of an intervention with all of our kids. Don't know if that would help or hinder. Any ideas?
This might cut down on the anxiety factor of physically entering a doctor's office.
I can really identify. I have a terrible time getting my husband to acknowledge that symptoms are symptoms and that he needs to see a doctor We DO see doctors all the time but each new symptom is a battle for me. It has actually helped to have the children involved a bit. My husband has, for example, been very lax about his hearing aid and when his son visited him last summer, the firs thing the poor son did was to pack my husband off to his hearing aid specialist. When my husband sees that his children are reacting to things, I have a bit more credibility.
Also, sometimes you just have to "woman up" and insist and don't take no for an answer. Take prisoners!!!!!! to the doctor!
It is very difficult to get a long time smoker to quit, even if doctors won't do surgery because of it. Your husband may have the mindset that he's already got COPD, so why bother quitting now? Surgeons are really cracking down on people who smoke, and more & more surgeons won't do surgery on people who smoke because it greatly increases operative problems. For smokers, anesthesia is a much bigger risk, healing takes a lot longer, they're more prone to pneumonia & blood clots after surgery. Unless it is an emergency, which in your husband's case it doesn't sound to be, a surgeon won't perform big elective surgeries such as a hip replacement or back surgery on a smoker.
Instead of you being focused on his problems, which he doesn't seem to want to do anything about to help himself to treat, move on & live your own life. Worrying about his problems is only going to bring you down. If he doesn't want to do anything about his health issues, banging your head against the wall isn't going to do anything. If he doesn't care enough about himself or your marriage to take care of his health issues, then you shouldn't be obsessed with it either. Leave him home to smoke his brains out, hobble around on his bad hip & bad back and go do your own things. You're going to waste your golden years worrying about someone who won't do anything to help himself.
And let him know it. Let him know that you're not going to sit around with someone who won't take the proper measures to help himself. Let him know that you have a life to live & you want to make the most of every day----you don't want to spend your life nagging him to quit smoking so he can get his hip replaced or get his back fixed. He's got to want to quit smoking. You can't make him do it.
In this day & age, I truly do not understand why anyone would smoke. I've heard the old excuse that once you're a smoker, it's so hard to quit, blah blah blah. It is much harder to drag an oxygen tank around with you when you develop COPD than to quit smoking. Plus, with the cost of cigarettes now, who would want to spend that money on cigarettes? Where I live, a pack of cigarettes is almost $10. TEN DOLLARS A PACK!! If you smoke one pack a day, that's $300/month---and that's is pushing $4,000 a year for cigarettes!! I'd rather take a couple of nice vacations with $4,000 than spend it on cigarettes that are going to kill me.
I don't do that anymore. I take charge and my husband has learned to "trust me." He knows that I have his best interest at heart. It was all just a big blow to his ego to admit that anything at all could be wrong with him.
Yes, with age decline it can get very frustrating because you no longer have the energy and ability of someone who was 50 years old, and that can be depressing. Plus, with age decline we all get some memory issues which may not be dementia, it just takes a brains a bit longer to find that file drawer in our brain that has the information :P
No, an intervention will only backfire. Your hubby is an adult and he can make his own decisions whether to go to the doctor or not. It's his body, if he wants to see it decline, so be it.