My wife just can’t understand what it’s like to go through what I’m going through. She can’t understand what it’s like to have all the extra hormones that I had to deal with while I was hopped up on steroids for six months. Crying at a moments notice, being moody, irrational, and generally having a different emotional disposition are all things that she just can’t understand.

Try as she may my beautiful wife who is chronically thin has no idea what its like to pour on thirty pounds in just a few months. Even worse, knowing that the extra pounds are not permanent keeps one from justifying purchasing more clothes to cover the new girth. She just absolutely doesn’t get it! She can’t imagine how awkward it is to need to use a rubber band to hold my pants together ’cause the button won’t reach the buttonhole.

She’s never had something foreign growing inside her, sucking her life’s energy and strength to feed its own growth. It’s as if I have a parasite living in my back…but its not a parasite, it’s a tumor. There’s no way she can comprehend the loss of control one feels with something like that being inside of you, one with you, and yet completely foreign. She just can’t get it.

Jess doesn’t know what its like to be nauseous day in and out, for food to not sound good for months at a time, and to be stuck on your back all day every day. She doesn’t understand how boring it is to be on bed rest, to not feel good enough to read, and yet to realize that there truly isn’t anything good to watch on TV. Nope, she doesn’t get it.

I keenly remember when I was at the hospital the transition that happened as I lost any need for privacy. So many doctors and nurses had looked at my body, poked and prodded it, that I lost any sense that there was anything to hide. Jess can’t understand that. She can’t understand what its like to be exposed so many times and so regularly that you forget you might have anything to be ashamed of.

Jess can’t understand how taxing it is to have to go to the doctor all the time, to feel like you’ve got a chain connecting you with your doctor ’cause you aint ever going to get to far from ’em. No way, no how she understands that frustration.

Speaking of frustration!!! She has absolutely no way to understand how annoying it is to have to pee constantly! I swear I’m like an eighty year old man (my apologies to any eighty year old men I just offended)! I pee every five minutes…and there’s no way my wife gets that. She can’t understand what that’s like for sure. And it’s not just pee either, no way she understands what severe constipation feels like. It is a miserable feeling that she just can’t sympathize with.

Thank God I got a vasectomy last year.