Which is more important to you -- your marriage or your kidney?

It is very challenging to be married to someone with bipolar disorder. When they get manic or depressed, they can attack you in any number of ways. It can be very scary and anxiety provoking. So if your spouse said they wanted to go off the medicine that controls their bipolar disorder, you might put your foot down. You might tell your spouse that they have to stay on their meds, or you’ll leave them.

Your spouse is on Lithium. Lithium, over time, degrades kidney function. Eventually, after maybe fifteen or twenty years, they would need a new kidney. After that, they would have to live with drugs that suppress their immune response, and they will, in all likelihood, no longer be able to take drugs for bipolar disorder.

Your spouse wants to stop taking Lithium, and their psychiatrist says there are no other effective alternatives. You decide you can’t take the stress of living with someone with active mood swings. So, you put your spouse in a difficult position—they have to keep taking meds and lose a kidney, or stop taking meds and lose you.

If you were that spouse, what would you do? Is a marriage more important than a kidney? Or is the kidney more important than the marriage? Why?