I am new to the site so sorry for the long post. 18 months ago my husband had ruptured appendix with sepsis and nearly died. 7 months ago my father had a massive heart attack and still recovering. 6 months ago I had a routine smear which showed CIN 3 cancerous cells and underwent LLETZ treatment to burn them away, on Thursday I had my 6 month check up and I am awaiting the results. On Wednesday my mother was rushed into hospital with suspect appendicitis. Turns out her appendix had ruptured due to bowel cancer and she has undergone surgery to remove the appendix and some of the bowel leaving her with a stoma bag. We are awaiting for the results of her organs to see if the cancer has spread. I am not sure how much more I can take. I am caring for dad and currently back and for the hospital for mum, but when she comes home I will be her carer too. I am so scared that all this stress for my dad (my parents do not know about my issues) will set him back and potentially cause another heart attack. He is constantly tired all the time. And I worry about mum and what the future holds for her. On top of all this I have a beautiful daughter who is deaf so I have to think about her care also. My husband has recovered so I am very lucky I have him. I feel like I am cursed. I don’t know what to do.
Lisa,
I have been a multiple carer, so was my husband. 4 elderly very disabled parents, and a son with severe learning difficulties. We struggled for years, I developed a life threatening problem, my husband died of a massive heart attack at 58, and my life will never be the same again.
You CANNOT give “hands on” care to everyone.
Your top priority must be looking after yourself, and your own health.
Start thinking about your role differently, your role needs to be care MANAGER not provider.
Yes, I know, your parents don’t want strangers in the house, etc. etc. they only want you. Almost everyone here has the same problem, you are not alone there!
Mum and dad both need to either accept carers at home, or move into residential care.
Now a few questions, because how they are cared for, and the support they can get from Social Services, depends on
the answers.
How old are they?
Do they own, or rent their home?
Do they have over £46,000 in savings?
Lisa - Shakespeare has a line for it: When sorrows come they come not in single spies, but in battalions.
And you are certainly battling battalions, that is for sure.
As BB says, you have to think of yourself now as care MANAGER, not care PROVIDER, and above all, focus on your own care needs (Who Cares for the Carer? is, alas, a well known saying on this forum!). The answer is - No one unless they care for themselves.
If YOU ‘crack’ then you are no use to those you care for, so it is NOT ‘being selfish’ (!) to think about yourself, but in fact the opposite!
May I say that THE most important thing is that your husband survived! That, in itself, shows you are NOT ‘cursed’ but ‘blessed’ and I don’t say that lightly (I’m widowed by cancer myself, so in that respect I ‘envy’ you…however many battalions you are up against!).
The thing, though, with having SO many battalions lined up against you, is assessing which are the ‘worst’ to face. If I said to you, if you could pick ONE ‘care-issue’ to be free of for YOUR sake (ie, what causes YOU the most headache), which would it be? I say ‘you’ because as a selfless mum I’m sure you’d say ‘My daughter to be hearing please!’, but that is for HER sake, and what I’m asking now is to say what for YOUR sake would you love ‘lifted off YOU’…
I’m going to take a punt on your answer and suggest that it would be ‘my parents’… because, sadly, that is usually the case for all multi-carers! Aged parents with multiple health problems, especially those who ‘don’t want anyone else looking after them’ (!!!)(Ibecause, often they are ‘in denial’ there is anything that NEEDS help - they seem to ‘discount’ help when it is provided by family as if that ‘didn’t count’ - it’s the ‘having strangers in the house!’ that they see as ‘care’…and they don’t like it!)
Out of the two, which do you think is the parent who causes YOU the most stress emotionally, AND (or in deed, OR??) the most practical negative impact on you? For example, it could be that it is your mum who needs the PRACTICAL care, but your dad who is taking an EMOTIONAL toll on you…???
For all of your many battalions up against you, the task is to identify the worst, suss out the potential for reducing the care burden ‘in total’ on you, and then seeing ‘what can be done’ to lower that total burden to bearable and sustainable levels.
In the meantime, all the VERY best with your results - I do hope they are ‘good’. Again, the best thing to focus on is that things were spotted BEFORE they got worse - that is a lot to be relieved about, even at that level!