Thursday, January 19, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Does Lisa Swayze (wife of actor Patrick Swayze) Have Super Powers?
Posted by
RownDivision
at
7:25 AM
Lisa Niemi Swayze has written a book about her experiences loving and losing her husband Patrick Swayze after a 21 month battle with pancreatic cancer. The book is titled: Worth Fighting For.One review I read said:
"...The memoir reveals just how much one woman can change, when forced to confront the horrors of illness and the inevitability of those final moments. We witness the transformation of Lisa from a terrified creature who begs her just-diagnosed husband ‘Please don’t make me do this’, to the superwoman who refuses to give in, confronts every grim aspect of his nursing care and brings him home to die..."
They were two exceptional and normal people, as we all are, who loved each other and did the best they could. I confess I find it unfair to Lisa, and to the rest of us, to characterize her as a "superwoman." This makes it seem that her efforts came from some special source of rare super power she has access to, as opposed to the power that naturally derives from love and empathy - and that she is in a different class of being than the rest of us who live in the realm of illness with our partner.
What do you think?
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
One Illness; Two Victims
Posted by
RownDivision
at
2:50 PM

This comment just came in on an older post. I think it is well worth re-posting:
Married 36 years and the last 7 years my husband has been a paraplegic due to a mass on his spinal cord. There are TWO victims here. Him and I, and I feel like I am paralyzed right in the middle of my life. I wish I were the one dying or dead. I was not happily married to him before his surgery and I was waiting for the kids to at least be in college before I left the marriage. Now I am stuck taking care of a man who hit me and verbally abused me up until the day he got sick. Now I do it to myself because I am too much of a wimp to leave him. Thank you for letting me say this out loud, my mom died 6 years ago and I have no one to hear my pain.
I have found readers of this blog to be very sensitive to the complexities of living with illness as part of your relationship. Solutions can be elusive. Problems are complicated and simple advice that usually has the word "just" in it (like - "why don't you just leave him" or "why don't you just eat less and get some exercise) often isn't substantive enough to be of real help.
What thinking can you offer the writer of the comment above? What have you learned from your experiences as ill partner or well, caretaking partner that you can share with this author?
Sunday, January 1, 2012
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