Men More Likely to Leave Sick Partner

Great. Another reason we suck.

The last thing a cancer patient wants to hear is that they're being abandoned. But according to a new study, men are far more likely to leave and divorce their partners rather than become a caretaker. In other words, men are A-holes.

Dr. Marc Chamberlain, a Seattle oncologist (tumor doctor), started noticing that his female patients with brain tumors were far less likely to have companions at their bedside than his male patients. Being a scientist at heart, this prompted Chamberlain to conduct an investigation.

The study included patients with cancer or Multiple Sclerosis, and it was found there was an overall divorce rate of 12%. But when the divorces were broken down by sex, it was found that only 3% of marriages ended when the man was sick, and a whopping 21% when the woman fell ill.

According to Dr. Chamberlain, this doesn't take into account pre-study relationship troubles, but it's still pretty scary.

"All these patients were couples when we met them, but we don’t know about pre-diagnosis marital conflicts that had been festering," he said. "But the striking part is with life threatening illness, how often women are abandoned compared to men. That does not speak very well of my gender."

So, yeah... umm... sorry about that ladies. I swear we're not all monsters and bedside ditchers. At least you can take comfort in the fact that it's not you, it's us, right?