…Nineteen years after I started caring and only a few months after finally starting to get paid for it. I’m just about done.
About six years ago, I started to fall/collapse - so I took the route of trying to get a diagnosis. 4 doctors and 4 hospital departments later… I’m no closer to a diagnosis now than I was when I started this journey.
Meanwhile, my health is getting worse. Walking a mile exerts me to the point where I am spending most of the next week in bed and resting to get over the illness. During this time I am barely able to see to my own eating and toileting needs - never mind caring on top of that.
I’m at the point where I feel that getting myself a wheelchair is the only way forward for me… but I don’t have a diagnosis and I don’t know if I can get a prescription for a wheelchair with the way that things are right now.
Of course, I have to have another problem, too… and that problem comes in the shape of the DWP. I know that as soon as I sign off carers, they will be all over me to get work and I’m unable to get disability benefits in my own right, despite the fact that I can’t even get up from a chair without falling/collapsing.
As far as work goes, no employer will take a chance on hiring me as I am, even if I have an idea of some sort of work that I could do - I learned that through experience just before the pandemic.
I no longer know which way to turn given that I can’t be left alone any longer and I can’t give up my caring role without being hounded to find work in positions that I don’t even know if I can do the job or not. There’s no work trial process that I know of, even if I could convince someone to give me a chance… then I’m scared that the fatigue will leave me unable to work for longer than half a day a week at best.
I’m in scary times, need help and I don’t even know where to turn for the best