Guilt

When my husband was diagnosed with a-fib, we started to figure out a few things that might be a trigger to his episodes and food was one of them.

As I am the one that is usually responsible for meal planning and making the food choices, I really started to feel responsible for his atrial fibrillation which brought on a lot of guilt on my end. Every time he would have an episode I would think back on what I had laid down in front of him for his dinner the night before, if I had done something wrong and made him go back into a-fib, blah blah blah. I'm sure you know what I mean. I think about all of those dishes over the past years that he loves and (due to my love for him, right?) I would prepare. Like those 3 cheese meatballs, all of the pizza dip and his favorite dessert, cherries in the snow.

Well once I started to feel the responsibility that I might have brought all of this on him, because he can't say no to anything that I sit before him because that would hurt my feelings, there was a sudden change around our house. I wasn't going to cause my husband to die!

I started to research healthy food choices, how many calories, carbs, sugars and so on that he should have on a daily intake. It was quite the scene around our home. I printed up a daily schedule for foods and wrote everything down that he ate. And every night I would add up all the calories, fat, carbs and everything else. I wouldn't let him go over 2000 calories per day. It took me double time at the grocery store, checking all those labels and trying to select the healthy choices. I'm convinced that other shoppers thought I was nuts because I would be in the cereal aisle for a half hour checking every one for the lowest sugar etc.

I think I was trying to take back and make right for feeling that I was the culprit here.

When we would go to restaurants I would say no to him. When we went to family gatherings I would say no, you can't have that and everyone would look at me like I was such a mean wife. But I started to not care, and if it took me saying no to him to keep him out of a-fib then I would just take the punches.

Well you know, that is a very big responsibility to live up to. And I got tired of being the mean person all the time. I decided that I couldn't keep living with the guilt and the fear that I might do something wrong. Plus, I felt like such a hypocrite because I don't even eat right and take care of myself. I don't like meat, milk, fruits or vegetables. I like chips, cookies, candy and Starbucks. Something has to change here.

I started to put more responsibility on my husband to take charge of his food choices. I still do the shopping and cook the meals, but if he makes wrong choices, I don't feel as guilty anymore. I feel like that is his decision to make. It's made me feel better, and him also.

After all, I'm not his mother, I'm his wife, friend and partner. And I want to live many years with him and look forward to all the grandchildren we will have, hopefully someday. I want to look forward to traveling with him and I want both of us to live a healthy life. Without the guilt!