Reply to Significant weight loss, refusal to see a doctor

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[quote=Anonymous]I’m sorry, OP, that must be so painful and frightening for you. Knowing human nature, especially of wives, please don’t let your worries for him take up all the space where your own self-nurturing and mental health should live as well.

I actually came to the forum today to maybe ask for help with a similarly stubborn person, so I hear you! There has to be some amount of fear driving his refusals, right? Even if he and his family are not the type to seek out regular health care, this is so far into the situation where anyone would normally go to a doctor even if they didn’t get primary care…. I’m assuming he must fear cancer?

FWIW, my father had a similar extreme weight loss with serious fatigue around age 70. He’s always been a beanpole so didn’t have far to go! Of course they were terribly worried about cancer, but in his case it turned out to be diabetes. He eats well and gets a ton of exercise for someone his age, so that was completely out of the blue. He’s had to adjust his diet and he’s on some daily meds, but it was an easy fix and he’s doing great. I had an autoimmune disease in my 20s that led to extreme weight loss. The weight loss was because my immune response made me not want to eat (like when you’re sick), plus there were lung issues that I recently learned somehow burned extra calories on their own (the body is weird and amazing!). In my case, I did have to take some basic chemo (pills, not intravenous), but the put me into remission and I’ve never had a relapse. Other people have mentioned intestinal illnesses that can interfere with getting the nutrition/calories from food. And even with cancer, I know plenty of people who have had cancer in the past but are in remission and doing great. Maybe stressing the many other things it could be could help if he is secretly worried about a horrible future with cancer?

I’ve read “Being Mortal” and have become a fairly serious evangelist of the “let people decide their own path” approach. If he was single, it would be his prerogative to waste away even if that made no logical sense to others. But he’s NOT single, and it’s not fair to ask you and your child to have to just sit back and watch. No doubt you’ve tried to express that already, but maybe the more you make this an issue of you and your child and how it’s paining you both — and not him and what he should do at all, leave that side up to him and just lay out your heartbreak — maybe he’ll come around on his own to taking action as a way of helping you with your pain? Normally I wouldn’t be encouraging a family member to “make this all about YOU,” ha. But in this case, the only thing that might make him take action might be as a way of saving his loved ones from hurt.  [/quote]

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