My (29) family *offered* me help after surgery and dropped the ball. How can I move past this?

I will try to keep this kind of vagueish for privacy sake but at the same time….

On a throw away for nothing because this is definitely identifiable lol but on mobile. Excuse the length.

I had surgery today to remove a tumor that had cancer properties (cancer characteristics?). I also will eventually need surgery on my back because of a slew of issue, plenty because of genetics.

I’ve been putting off this surgery because I have two children and I can’t count on my family to assist even short term and their other family lives an hour outside of our town.

Both of my kids are in school m-thur from 8-5pm. I do have a partner but he works full time as well and doesn’t get a lot of time off, he gets off after they need to get to school and will still be at work when it’s time to pick them up.

This usually works perfectly for us because I work long hours, less days.

On top of the resting part of recovery will be next to impossible with a toddler here.

Leading up to this surgery, my dad and I had a heart to heart where he TOLD me to have the surgeries, that they’d make sure my kids were fine blah blah. Every time I spoke to him, he asked about it. Same with every one in my family. They urged and urged with all of these promises to “help”. Even with plans to make sure we had food after surgery, again something they offered THIS morning and afternoon (“well if you can’t have this meal what’s another thing you’d like?”) . I couldn’t eat anything from midnight until after surgery and S(partner) didn’t eat anything either in support.

*Partner got us food immediately after we left the hospital!

Well I went ahead and scheduled the surgery for the tumor because the recovery time was less/lighter and I was using it as a test run as well because if this doesn’t go well, then back surgery is completely out of the question until I have to have emergency surgery.

The days leading up to this surgery has been extremely stressful because some of my pain meds came up missing (I’m on pain management) and a lot of other bullshit I will absolutely go into detail about if asked. I kept clarifying and asking that they’ll be able to help me. Everyone was absolutely sure they could. I stuck to the plan we had and made sure.

I was only going to need help the day of and the day after. I just needed my kids to get from school today(and this was a maybe), spend the night and get to school tomorrow. My oldest son goes to school with my sister’s kids and my youngest school is on the same street just a few minutes away.

Today my partner took me to my appointment and once there we realized my Dr was behind so my wait was a lot longer than we anticipated. The procedure also took some extra time because I had complications.

At 2, my sister asked if I wanted her to grab my oldest son because she was getting her kids and I said yes (he usually stays until 5 for tutoring) because I thought I would’ve been out before than and my partner wasn’t able to leave since he was my ride.

I also said “Hey, can y’all please prepare to grab M too just in case because I’m not sure I’ll be out of here by 4:45). Every one read my messages and didn’t reply for a long while. So now we are scrambling because my youngest son’s ride (someone else) wasn’t going to be able to get him because of car troubles. I asked my nurse and she said they’d allow my partner to leave as long as he stays near his phone. After I said “never mind I figured it out.” THEN my sister replied in the GC with an unrelated response.

My parents never reached out before I went in and didn’t respond to my messages when I let them know I was out. When my mom did call, she wanted to know what they gave me for pain.

My best friend never once text and asked how I was feeling going into this procedure OR reached out to check on me afterwards. I actually still haven’t heard from her.

I left the hospital and my MIL called me and I just broke down crying. She offered to send my FIL to get my kids even though they stay an hour away and SHE just had surgery. She even said that she’d have my FIL will get them to school for us for the rest of the week on his way to work (he agreed) but I can’t even take her up on the offer. But I appreciate it, because I know she was genuine.

I know people will say no one is obligated to help with someone else’s kids and sure. But we do in my family or at least I thought we did. Or that I should’ve had a back up. But I did! I had backups for my back ups and it all fell through.

I’m up and unable to rest because S had to go to a mandatory meeting at work and the toddler is obviously awake, but I just bribed him with candy and tv for awhile.

Omg that’s another thing, he thought my sister was getting the kids, I thought she was getting the kids. She said she was getting the kids. Said she can’t miss the gym. Okay fine. So he was willing to miss this meeting but I insisted he goes because I’m not loopy or anything just in pain and can manage until he gets back.

(He’s back and kids are in bed )

I want to move past this but my first thought is a nuclear “don’t contact me”. I could use some assistance in communicating all of this without coming off accusatory or on the offense.

I really can’t tell if I am over reacting to this because I’ve already had some issues recently. Is the heightened emotions coming from the anesthesia or if this is really fucked up. My biggest problem is that they offered and insisted. Constantly. Am I tripping?? I am in therapy working on my response to things so I’m always second guessing myself and my reactions.

Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far.

Submitted April 12, 2023 at 07:24PM by Dear_Bit_8842 https://ift.tt/LbvG7Pw