Caring is hard...

[CatR]

Hello

I'm new to these forums. I am a carer for my husband, who has a disability, due to car accident. I met him after his accident. We have been married for one year but have been together for 6 years.

Lately I have been finding my role as his carer to be stressful and overwhelming. We are attempting to get custody of his daughter, who lives with his ex wife's parents. This is an additional worry for me be cause although I knew that being a carer for my husband would be difficult I didn't expect the possibility of being responsible for his daughter as well. I have experienced depression and anxiety and self harm some years ago. I am not having any thoughts of self harm currently but I am afraid that i may eventually spiral back to that. As it is I do everything at home, I go to work I do the housework and manage the bills. I feel very much alone in all of this and our lives look nothing at all how I expected or wanted. My GP has referred me for some medicare funded counseling. Having been through that system before I don't have much faith in getting anything helpful out of it. 

[CrashCoyote]

Hi CatRose80,

I am a 51yo father of five living in Sydney, divorced. I have no experience in being a carer but I understand it must be a very demanding role and having little or no respite must be overwhelming.

It is hard to know how to support you without knowing a little more about your situation. Is your husband in need of constant care or is he able to do some things for himself? How old is his daughter? I suppose the realities of her living with you (which I imagine would bring him  lot of happiness) would mean exposing her to the world of being a carer to some degree herself? Or an extra burden to you?

I hope that someone with more insight than me can respond to you and I will keep an eye out for your posts, also.

Kind regards, John.

[geoff]

dear CatRose, welcome to the site, and what you have said is something which I had to do for a few elderly people, who were handicapped in some form, and sometimes they had all ready had a carer but they weren't doing the proper job, so it was left to me, so the intense demand is always there.

I well and truly know how difficult it would be to look after someone injured in a car accident, because I'm a terrible patient and would have been after my car accident.

It's an enormous job that is entailed to look after someone who has been injured, making doctors appointment and taking them to it, picking up medication and add on all what you have said above, it's very draining for you.

It must have been true love to marry someone who has been injured, and I don't mean any harm by saying this, because the affection must have been very strong, and it can still go on, and there is help for yourself, so if you google which you may have done so anyway but try this 'how to get carer help', not a mastermind by suggesting this, but there are many sites to click.

Someone previous has suggested a site, but sorry I can't remember who or what it was, maybe they will chip in and tell you.

I know that you haven't had any luck before with counselling, but perhaps this time the situation could be different and at least they may know of a group who can help you, so it maybe worth a try.

You have a great deal of work to do, so your time needed is 24/7, and also what is important is that you can fend off harming yourself.

With regards to his daughter it could be an expensive time trying to gain custody, which means going to court, employing a lawyer and paying exorbitant fees which will again put more stress onto you both, but mainly you as you are the one working.

I don't know what state you live in, but how they offer their services would be different.

I hope that you can get back to us. L Geoff. x

[CatR]

Thanks John and Geoff for your replies.
Well I had my first counseling session today and I think it went ok. My psychologist was very approachable and provided some very helpful feed back. Counseling may be useful to me this time.
You see from the last time, I really know what it means to 'fall through the cracks' my counselor at that time was snowed under with other medicare cases, she had a file of medicare clients as thick as my leg. Which she probably shouldn't have  told me about. In any case because she had so many cases I had to repeat myself every time I met her. Eventually I gave up and I believe she gave up on me and I stopped going and that's when I really crashed. Then I met my husband. I think it is true love and I don't blame him for how I feel now, its more the whole situation that is getting me down. He doesn't need constant care, but he has short term memory issues and nerve damage that affects his balance and fine motor skills, he uses walking aids. He wouldn't remember to bathe or eat if I didn't remind him, he is very forgetful of various things like people and places and how to use public transport and what we did yesterday (although that may be related to depression of his own)  and he does allow his disability to limit him in a lot of unnecessary ways and that's where I have to fill in the gaps for him and along with everything else, the custody and financial worries I feel very drained and very sad. But counseling went well so it gives me hope that it will be useful this time. I joined the beyond blue forum as a sort of safety net I suppose in the event that counseling was no help, realizing that obviously a forum cant replace a face to face counselor. It still helps to interact with people of like mind and experiences and helps me to reflect on things and get some feed back as well

Thanks
Cat 🙂

[CrashCoyote]

Hi Cat,

I am glad you are on the right track and feel a bond with your psych.

I will look out for your posts if you still feel the need to use the forums and in any case I hope it works out for you both.

Kind regards, John.