By David Futrelle
I‘m going to take a brief break from the usual to play internet matchmaker.
So I was looking through r/relationships.txt’s old tweetings to see if any of the horrible stories of Redditor relationships gone wrong that are the mainstay of the account might be worth writing about. Instead I found two strangely complementary stories of love and selfishness; they were almost mirror images of one another.
In the first, we have a fellow asking if he was an asshole (answer: yes!) for deserting his very sick girlfriend at the emergency room to go to the gym. (Click on the screenshots for the whole story.)
The other tweet told the story of a girlfriend threatening to kick her injured boyfriend out of his own apartment because she was sick of taking care of him.
Now, it seems unlikely that either one of these relationships is going to last. But I think we can pull a happy ending (or four) out from the wreckage here. We just have to shuffle the couples a little.
Clearly Smushed-Foot Boy needs to drop his ungrateful girlfriend and get with Bacterial Pneumonia Girl instead.
Meanwhile, Mean Girlfriend and Narcissist Boyfriend need to start dating each other so they can be giant jerks together.
Ta da! Problems solved. You’re welcome!
OBLIGATORY NOTE: These stories are from Reddit, so there’s always a chance that one or both are completely made up. But I’m a romantic, so I choose to believe.
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I’m a slow learner. I was abandoned more than once in ER by my ex. Once with a piece of glass in my eye. He couldn’t stay because the chairs were ‘uncomfortable’. At least it’s an easy walk back from the local casualty to mine.
The 2nd time was when I was admitted with chest pain and couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what it was, but turned out it was pleurisy and pneumonia. I was in a hospital all the way across from London from where I lived. I texted him where I was and he texted back “OK”. I even had to arrange alternative child pick up from the hospital. Asshole.
Thank you to everyone who gave information on getting rid of the unwanted drugs. I’ll look into those options in my area when I get a chance.
Your girlfriend was having severe, tear-inducing back and chest pain when breathing?
Of course you’re not the asshole. She’s not thinking this through. Just tell her to stop breathing and go do your lifting.
Thankyou for the kind words everyone.
@Buttercup, I’m sorry to hear you have lost family members to emobolisms, my condolences. This clotting disorder came right out of the blue. No history of anything like it in the family. I was 42 when it happened, and I have my blood tested yearly because I’m on an antipsychotic that can induce diabetes (yay) and they didn’t pick up any issues, so yeah.
I didn’t have a DVT as far as they could see, and believe me I had my legs felt a lot those few hours in A&E. In the end, in my follow-up treatment, they said I must have a genetic predisposition and if I don’t take a daily blood thinner I have about an 80% chance of it happening again. Actually the med is pretty unobnoxious, yeah I pump blood when I cut myself, I just use this as an incentive not to cut myself 😀
I had a female colleague who got some nasty burns in a lab accident. Her Insignificant Other left to go home and play video games.
Personal experience here. Waiting in the hospital is boring. Waiting when you’re not the patient is even worse. You do it anyway. Once we’re sure things are under control, both my wife and I tell each other to go home. But stick around to make sure you’re not needed. You’d rather go to the gym or play Call of Duty? Take it to someone who cares.
@rugbyyogi
I’m sorry you were treated that way. That is very unacceptable for a romantic partner or any close one to act
@Buttercup
That was my experience with the stuff too, when I was given some for a third-degree burn covering a finger joint.
I quit taking it pretty quick, I had rather deal with the pain.
So, it appears that the Dems are finally going to impeach the motherfucker? Should have much sooner, but I’m still feeling pretty celebratory!
I know the Senate is unlikely to find him guilty, but at least those craven shits will have to go on record in a way that can’t ever be explained away with being just fine with blatant corruption.
Oh, and the Boris Johnson humilitian was nice too!
@WWTH
Even if he doesn’t get removed from office, it should air the dirty laundry and show to the public all the awful things he has done, which could deter potential 2020 voters.
We should have done this long ago.
The thing I worry about is that if this fails, it could end up galvanizing his supporters and increase their turnout in 2020.
About 10 years ago I nearly died from something as ubiquitous as a tooth abcess. It began on SUnday, and my dentist’s emergency call line would only call in narcotic pain medication and NOT antibiotics. I had been to see this dentist for years. They had my medical history. They knew you have to be on antibiotics for at least 24hr prior to seeing the dentist, yet repeatedly refused to order anything but pain meds (which I refused to make the point I was not meds seeking).
So Monday morning I showed up at my dentist office the moment they opened, I waited for an hour to see a general dentist. That guy had to refer me to an oral surgeon next door. By this point, half my face was swollen past recognition and I had become very hot and discombobulated. I stumbled next door and registered at the desk and laid down on the floor of the waiting room to soothe my hot face. I remember everything getting very fuzzy and my brain wasn’t working right. I was flashing in and out of awareness. At some point, the staff called my emergency contact to come. They did NOT call an ambulance. My (now ex) boyfirend had to lift me off the floor and carry me to his truck and deliver me to the ER. I don’t remember more than bits of this process. I do remember the beginning of the CAT scan, because I had to lay down and the pain was so excruciating I saw orange and passed out after screaming until my throat went raw.
When I woke up again, I was on morphine and saline and heading into emergency surgery. My abcess, left unmedicated, had ruptured into my sinuses and I had become septic. After the source of the infection was removed, and my facial sinuses had been surgically cleared, I remained septic. I was on the highest dose of morphine possible for a month (along with all the antibiotics). The surgeries left me with facial paralysis and numbness. I now have a Mona Lisa smile.
After 30 days of morphine and anti-anxiety meds, they freed me. I had been 90d smoke free when I went into the hospital. In the weeks following my release, I NEEDED something. I started stealing smokes, hiding it, wishing I could stop, sure that my NEED was for the cigarettes I had so recently quit. I ended up smoking full time again and I haven’t been able to kick it again. And it took years for me to realize I conflated a need for Morphine with my need to smoke. I’m not sure which end of the stick I got. They left me with an addiction and no way to address it, or even a warning that I might have cravings. Perhaps if I had been clearly made aware that I might experience them I could have known them for what they were and reissted them. Maybe not.
PS: I couldn’t sue or hold the dentist accountable for my near death (I was given a 30% survival rate for septicemia) thanks to the laws in the US that I was only allowed to sue if permanent damage had been done. My facial nerve damage was not considered a disfiguration nor grounds.
PPS: Dental abcesses are no joke. Take them as the potentially life threatening things they are.
@WWTH
I can help but feel irritated at the morose tone in which Pelosi accepted, dragging her feet all the way. Yet when it came to targetting AOC, Ilhan Omar and the rest of the Squad, she went out of her way, both at home and abroad, to deliberately target and attack them. The fact that she rounded up support within the caucus against them, and has been unwilling to do so for Trump all this time, is pretty telling of her character.
She is also a White supremacist, as far as I’m concerned.
@Byebob
That sucks. I almost had an abcess but I was able to take care of it on time. Nevertheless, the pain for the tooth removal was hell because of the infection and anesthesia not working.
@Knitting Cat Lady
Visits to the ER are the absolute worst. Hoping you feel better soon.
No abcess, but an impacted wisdom tooth more years ago than I care to remember. Hurt like s**t, and painkillers don’t work that well on my nervous system, if at all. Ouch.
@Knitting Cat Lady
What was so scary about the gall bladder pain is that it was just so constant, so that I became less aware of anything else.
Plus the anxiety that it could have something to do with my transplant, which thankfully did not fail for another 4 years.
Naglfar: pharmacies in most countries take any drugs. Any old expired pills, unused pain killers, whatever (even for pets), they’ll dispose of them properly.
You really don’t want to flush drugs, because then you end up with antibiotic-resistant bacteria infecting fish that are high as a kite.
Most fire stations have a med turn in box in their lobby, at least in Midwest US states.
I am so cautious when getting Vicodin, I’ve had it 3 times and always stopped taking it probably too soon, but better to err that way to be safe. After my wisdom teeth I took one and puked so just did Ibuprofen after that. Took a couple after my c-section then quit. When I broke my hip, took them for a couple weeks, never refilled even though I could have. But I have a pharmacist Dad and sister so I knew all about the risks of addiction.