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My (54F) son (36M) kept a multiple sclerosis diagnosis from me for 10 years. It turned out everybody (by Sparky)

 Sparky (0)  (29 / M-F / Massachusetts)
18-Nov-20 4:20 pm
My (54F) son (36M) kept a multiple sclerosis diagnosis from me for 10 years. It turned out everybody knew except me, and the reasons that he gave me felt really hurtful, and I feel somewhat betrayed by everybody in my family. I am really not sure how to deal with this.

I remember my son was living in New York when he said that he got 'into a car crash' and was basically bed bound, and he said he was fine, but was having a lot of difficulties recovering. This was when he was about 24-25. I was all the way in Michigan, where I live. I visited him once and he was using crutches, but seemed to be recovering.

I now know that was a lie, and he actually had MS, his first bout of it. I found out by finding pamphlets for MS drugs in his house when visiting recently, and asking him why he had them. He told me he was diagnosed with MS 'recently' and I was absolutely horrified with fear for him. Then he told me that was a lie, and that he was diagnosed when he was 25. I honestly had no idea what to say. It was like dead silence for a bit. My sister had MS, so I am familiar with it. He said he didn't tell me because he thought I was going to be overbearing and freak out constantly and have a nervous breakdown about every little symptom, and that he is sorry but he is happy I didn't know about it when he first got diagnosed because I "could be neurotic and annoying" about this stuff. He said it very bluntly, and honestly, it really, really hurt my feelings. His tone was insulting, as if he was trying to rub it in my face how awful I would have been about it, and trying to make me feel bad. I didn't say this to him, but it did. He said that while he was very bad the first year (confusion, legs barely worked, personality changes, eye sight decline etc), he gradually recovered and is now mostly symptom free, and has been for 8-9 years. He then said something really hurtful, and I don't even think he realized how hurtful it was, but he said "I dont know if I could have recovered with you giving me stress constantly and acting neurotic about everything". I honestly wanted to cry a bit, I mean, was this how he thought of me? I know he can be somewhat of a negative person to people around him in many ways without understanding why its bad, but this felt like it was the first time he was taking it out on me.

I feel incredibly weird because god, I am worried about him, but at the same time I feel incredibly hurt by what he said, and the way he said it. I talked to my ex husband, and he knew about it. My daughter and other son knew about it. Everybody but me seemingly knew about it. In fact my daughter and ex husband visited him frequently when he first got diagnosed, I was the only one left out. I should clarify that my ex husband and me are still very good friends, he ended up being gay and falling in love with a man, but we literally live up the block from one another and raised our children on that block. So he was lying to me every single time we talked about our son. I get that he felt that he couldn't betray his son, but I also feel betrayed here. By everyone.

I am not sure how to approach this. What do I do? Do I just leave this be? Do I confront my son about how much this hurts me? I almost feel like it would just confirm his worries about me being too 'neurotic'. I should probably mention this isn't the first time my son has done this type of hurtful stuff to people, he seemingly can be a bit of a cruel person at times, and maybe he doesn't always realize how he is hurting other peoples feelings.

TL;DR - - I just found out my entire family was keeping my sons MS diagnosis from me for over a decade.


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