Heartbroken…and feeling very selfish

So, I guess the best thing is to come right out a say it. I have been with my husband for 20 years. Married for fifteen of those years. We have two wonderful children. A few years ago he started having seizures. He was diagnosed as epileptic after having a seizure a few summers ago. His last one before that was 15 years prior, but when he got tired of the side effects of the medication and went off, he stopped having seizures. He's never been very careful, especially when he should be and has had several heard traumas over the years. He developed what the doctors decided (because they didn't know for sure) a staph infection in his eye which caused a breakout on his forehead. It cleared up with antivirals, but it left him with debilitating face and head pain. The doctors don't know what is causing it, and some even think it's all in his head. After many trips to the hospital, and to doctor's offices and firm diagnosis of fibromyalgia (Which does not explain his debilitating face and head pain), I started doing more research into face pain specifically. I've come up with several things that could be causing his pain. Trigenminal Neuralgia, Ophalmoplegic Migraine and Occipital Neuralgia. All of them have to do with the nerve branches of the face and head. It could be one of them, two of them, or all three of them. His symptoms fit the most with Atypical Trigenminal Neuralgia AKA the suicide disease. We won't know anything until we can get into see the doctors again, and they are tired of dealing with him, and his pain. All other possibilities have been exhausted. There are no lesions, no tumors, nothing in his brains scans to explain the cause of the pain. He's been on so many medications and combinations of medications over the last few years I lost track of what they all have all been. Nothing completely takes the pain away, not even prescribed narcotics. They only take the edge off, when the doctors will prescribe them. If it's not some kind of Neuralgia of his facial and cranial nerves, there is no other explanation for his pain, and his therapist believes the pain is not all in his head. I have talked to him about the issues I am going to bring up here, but it upsets him, and when he gets upset, it causes his pain to get worse. I don't want to do anything to cause him more pain. So I stopped bringing it up. Anyway, so, on to me. I am a published romance author. I know the difference between the dramatized romances in my novels and a real, flesh and blood love between to adult people. There are ebbs and flows of passion. Couples can get out of sync, and need to make the time to reconnect. Life can and does get in the way of romance, but, I have never needed my husband to be overly romantic. But there are things I need from him, that he just cannot give. I need to be intimate. I need physical contact. I need to be touched. I need all of these things to be happy and healthy—and to be able to write. But he can't give it. All of his ability at faking being okay goes to our girls. The rest of the time he spends trying to medicate himself (doctor prescribed) enough—without out over medicating—to be able to get sleep despite his pain, or zoning into his own little world to deal with the pain. He's my husband and I love him dearly, but I don't know how much longer I can do this. I feel so selfish and guilty for even thinking that I can't do this with him any longer. I am 35. My husband and I had a happy, healthy sex life before he got sick. I just…I don't know what to do anymore. All he does is focus on himself. I can't blame him, because I can see the pain on his face and in his eyes, but I am starting to resent it. I see a happy couple on TV or on the street and I start to cry. If it is the Atypical Trigenminal Neuralgia, like I think it is, there are a few surgical options we haven't tried yet that could end his pain, but nothing else has worked. There is a large possibility any kind of surgery won't work. I am looking at the rest of my life taking care of him, and not being able to go out and get my needs met. Any kind of divorce is out of the question. I don't know how to deal with this. I don't know how to just put on my big girl panties and go on with my life lacking the physical parts of marriage I need to both be mentally healthy and to be able to write—which is supporting us at this point. I am not even sure if I am making sense at this point.

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