Life with Crohn's – A Husbands Perspective

A guest post written by Krystal's husband:

I never knew what illness was until I met my wife. I come from a family where no one was ever sick. The worst I ever saw was the occasional flu. After 7 years I still don’t fully understand it and at times don’t appreciate how restricted my wife is as a "Crohnie."

The physical scarring for me is easy to look past. I find my wife immensely attractive and the bag has never bothered me. When she is dressed you can’t even tell she has one.

It has taken me a long time to realize that my wife cannot do everything.

Just getting up in the morning, going to work and coming home is a strain on her body. Let alone organizing the kids, meals, school, day care, and the million other things modern-day mums organize.

I play my part, of course. I do a lot of the washing, gardening, and cleaning. However, it hasn’t always been like that. In the early days, I couldn’t understand why after a 12-hour shift I came home and the house was messy or the washing wasn’t folded. This was especially frustrating on days when she wasn’t working. Obviously, I now understand that she needed those days off just to rest and rejuvenate so she could get through the next day.

That was when she explained to me the spoon theory.

It was a 2-page article about a girl explaining to her friend how difficult it was living with a chronic illness. I will "man phrase" this into a few sentences. First, you need to break down every single action you take throughout the day, e.g., waking up, getting up, showering, getting dressed, breakfast, etc. Each one of these actions uses one of your spoons.

The basic premise is that my wife has a very limited number of spoons. Once those spoons are gone there is nothing left in the tank. That’s it. No more energy. I, as a healthy male, have basically unlimited spoons. So when my wife runs out I need to be there with mine to help and encourage, not be angry because the washing isn’t folded.

As I said previously my wife is INCREDIBLY sexy.

Unfortunately she does not see what I see when I look at her. I see a well-proportioned goddess with curves in all the right places. She sees an aging mother who is no fun at all. However, she does think I am good-looking so maybe her eyes are just no good. I did tell her I thought they were on upside down early on in our relationship.

Unfortunately, when she falls into bed exhausted from just surviving the day she rarely has any spoons left for the fun stuff. It took me a long time not to take that personally.

However, we make it work. I won’t lie and say it has been easy. We have our ups and downs. But with 2 beautiful children and a stunning wife, I am a very happy man.