A spouse with cancer is generally not as burdensome for a partner as more disabling conditions such as dementia, where you combine both the stress of caring for the spouse and waning social support from your partner.

On the one hand, it's common sense it's hard to see someone you love get sick or die. People are interconnected and their health is, too.

The timing of such interventions might be matched to the riskiest times for caregivers, for example, just after the hospitalization of the spouse.

When a spouse is hospitalized, the partner's risk of death increases significantly and remains elevated for up to two years. Stress and lack of social support may also adversely affect immunologic measures, so spousal hospitalization may have physiological effects on partners.

When a spouse is hospitalized, the partner's risk of death increases significantly and remains elevated for up to two years.

What it shows is that people are interconnected, and their health is interconnected, and seeing a person you love suffer, seeing them ill, harms you.