When you get married, if you go the traditional route on your vows, there comes a point where you tell your significant other, “I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”
Marriage is supposed to be a union where you support your spouse throughout it all, but this 43-year-old woman just learned that her 42-year-old husband has a terminal illness, and she still wants to file for divorce.
Her husband has been diagnosed with something called silicosis, which is a lung disease that occurs when you breathe in silica dust.
Silica dust is mainly in rocks such as quartz or sand, and silicosis is associated with careers in the mining and construction industries.
This woman’s husband works a job where he has encountered silica dust for years. Her husband refuses to share all of the information regarding his exact diagnosis, so she’s not sure how severe it is right now.
“His work mandates annual chest x-rays (that they provide), and when his came up abnormal, he followed up with a pulmonologist who had him get a CT scan,” she explained.
“There is no cure, but Dr. Google says that you have anywhere from 10-20 years after you have been diagnosed…. IF you stop being exposed and take steps to manage symptoms and do things like quit smoking.”
“He is required to wear an airstream respirator, but it turns out he has been frequently taking his off or wearing it incorrectly (because he found it annoying) and has been written up multiple times for doing this.”
So the odds are good that her husband might not have a decade left on this earth, given that he hasn’t been taking the precautions surrounding his job seriously. Additionally, her husband smokes a lot and is not interested in quitting.
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Oh, and he lied on their health insurance and said he does not smoke, so she’s convinced they will get nothing.
She also doesn’t see how she can try to go after his company for his illness since he has been written up for not wearing his respirator.
She and her husband share a 4-year-old child, and she’s pregnant with their second and six months along. Her husband absolutely will not tell his job that he’s been diagnosed with silicosis, even though this means his employer could get him a different position where he will no longer be exposed to the dust.
She’s a stay-at-home mom, though she has said she can go back to working full-time after she gives birth to make more money for their household.
“We have a 120-year-old home that has a leaky roof mold in the walls and sewage leaking into our basement from cracked pipes underground,” she said.
“I want to sell the house (that is in both of our names) so that we won’t lose it anyway when we need to pay for his medical bills.”
“He knows that by continuing to smoke and to expose himself, he will more than likely orphan his kids at a young age. He knows he will more than likely bankrupt us while they are young with his medical bills. I need to be able to work full time now, but he refuses to help pay for childcare or to watch the kids himself so I can go on interviews.”
None of her family members live close to her, and it’s not feasible for her to relocate with her kids to the state where they do live because that could be considered kidnapping.
So, she wants to divorce her husband. She thinks she will get full custody of their kids, but she doesn’t have any money to hire a lawyer.
She’s hoping that if she can manage to find someone to take her case anyway, she can make her husband pay her child support and force him to sell the home so they can get something out of it.
She’s also worried about being attached to her husband’s medical expenses, especially considering he doesn’t want to do anything to improve his health while he still has a slim chance.
She gets her husband might feel down and out after being told he has silicosis, but failing to get out of his own way isn’t helping any of them.
“I am sure he is reeling from his diagnosis, but this is a pattern of his – burying his head in the sand and pretending like nothing is happening – and his refusal to take his family into account has me looking at him with disgust and not love,” she continued.
“He is a young man, and if he quits smoking and stops the silica exposure, he could even receive a lung transplant in the future, but he is not interested in any of that.”
“My brother lost his wife to cancer when his kids were 1 and 2 years old, and I helped take care of them for a few years after she died, so I know what’s in store for my kids if they lose their Dad at [a] young age, but he doesn’t seem to care about any of that.”
She’s left wondering if it will make her a terrible person for divorcing him. What do you think?
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