Respite

It's very common for carers to be offered 'respite'. Typically, the person they care for will spend a night, or some night(s), in a care home so that the carer can have a day or few days respite from the demands of caring.

I haven't done this yet but since S has been given Continuing Healthcare funding I could easily do it in the future. There's a specific budget available. But, and this is something that you have perhaps to experience to appreciate fully, even now I find that my efforts to do more, get out and see friends etc are limited by my need to know that S is OK - even though I know that she is being well looked-after. There's almost a time-limit sometimes - I feel the pull and have to come home. Even though I talk about longer respite - even a single overnight away e.g. - I currently find it hard to imagine myself doing that. She still depends on me - I've kept her going. And as a result, I'm somehow dependent on her.

I think I might well eventually come to accept that extended respite, i.e. beyond a weekly 'evening off', will be necessary but I also feel that the difficulty that many carers have in accepting this is underestimated.

Carer's dependency

There is a kind of dependency that carers can experience. Just as the people we care for depend on us, so we can come to need them, however much we would like to be able to get away and do just what we want. So even if/when we know they are being looked after, probably well, we are so used to having them in our lives with all the difficulties and, if we're lucky, still some kind of communication and satisfaction that we are, to an extent, coping that it's very difficult to 'forget' about our loved one and we may even start to feel anxious, even if we are doing something we really want to do. The longer I'm away from S the stronger this feeling becomes.