She Woke Her Boyfriend in the Night, Begging Him to Take Her to the ER. His Response Shattered Their Relationship

A woman on Reddit says she hit her breaking point with her partner after a frightening medical episode left her begging him for help — and he refused to take her to the hospital.

Posting in Reddit’s r/AmIOverreacting forum, the 27-year-old explained that she initially thought she had come down with a typical viral bug. For the first two days, she mostly slept and stayed hydrated. By day three, however, everything changed.

“At first it was like any nasty bug, so for 2 days I was just sleeping and drinking water, then it took a turn for the worst on the third day,” she wrote. “From day 3 my throat felt it was constantly on fire, swallowing hurt, breathing hurt, my voice sounded like a 14 year olds second puberty… I’ve never known anything like this. I literally just silently cried for 3 days straight.”

One night, she woke up with her throat burning intensely. Hoping to ease the pain, she tried some ice cream and took ibuprofen — but it backfired. She started vomiting and said she went “into a massive pain frenzy” where she felt like she “couldn’t breathe.”

“I woke up my partner in absolute floods of tears asking if they could help me get to hospital,” she recalled. “He told me to go downstairs and drink some milk, I told him I had but I can’t breathe and I need to go, he told me to go downstairs and rolled over back to sleep. I was floored and frightened.”

Shaken, she made a few calls to calm herself down, then reached out to her partner’s sister. The sister stayed on the phone with her, then drove 40 minutes in the middle of the night to pick her up and take her to a walk-in clinic.

“At the walk in centre the first thing out of the doctors mouth was ‘oh god that’s swollen,’ ” she wrote. “I was in there for another 4 hours getting bloods and x-rays done. Apparently all my [observations] were bad but my bloods were normal and the staff said they couldn’t do anything because it’s viral, and all my results just said it was a terrible viral infection.”

Nearly five hours after leaving home, she was discharged with instructions to return if certain symptoms worsened, along with a note to stay off work for the next week.

“I went straight back to bed. My partner who hadn’t even text me came up and said if I needed anything to let him know,” she continued. “I just said ‘I did last night and you said no’ and he said that ‘I wish I did come but I know how dramatic you are when you’re sick.’ I told him to leave.”

She added that in their three-year relationship, she has never once asked to go to the hospital, making his “dramatic” comment feel especially hurtful.

“I have never in 3 years ever asked to go to the hospital. Not once. This isn’t a pattern of mine and it’s never something I’ve asked of him,” she wrote. “I think it just hit me there, this man doesn’t f—— like me. I was so frightened and in pain and he just rolled his eyes and pretended that this is just how I am.”

Commenters urged her to take his reaction seriously and shared their own stories as cautionary tales.

“My dramatic grandmother took a taxi against her husband’s wishes while she was having a f—— heart attack. ‘Wait until morning see how you feel,’ ” one person wrote. “The doctors told her she should be dead. She didn’t have an out from that life that she was willing to take. If you do take it.”

Another commenter summed up the consensus: “Honestly if someone leaves you crying in pain and calls you dramatic, that’s not a partner. You didn’t overreact, he just didn’t show up when it mattered. You deserve someone who actually cares when you’re struggling.”