I became this carer without really knowing I was a carer. I just was there putting one
foot in front of the other trying to keep going to help my husband and fight in his
corner for him. And it never occurred to me that there was never any support for me because
I’ve got my own mental health condition and stress is a trigger for that and I just
kind of disregarded it. I was just going to try to keep going and fight every day. It
wasn’t until much later on when the CPNs were involved and they said what about you,
have you got support and I thought not really. I mean I’ve got friends and family but I
had no official sort of support in place. I think I’ve had like a bit of mixed
experience with sort of support from school or education, employment and stuff. My last
job was surprisingly unsupportive given the field of work I was in. I asked for time off,
I mean there’s a procedure for it, but I’ve asked for time off quite quickly. And no one
told me that there was such a thing as carers leave. They insisted that I took it all out
of my annual leave. Then when I asked afterwards if I could sort of switch it around and give
it back to me they didn’t do it. But then when I was at UNI they were really supportive.
I had to come home for a month and it was right at sort of deadline time, they gave
me extensions and they were really… That’s really good to hear. It’s kind
of luck of the draw sometimes. It’s a mixed bag isn’t it?
Yes a lot of time we don’t think as being affected by things. We keep working and going
to work, we do everything when we come home and everybody thinks we are fit. And unless
you collapse, then they will say you’re sick. But you know I feel like that’s why
there’s support for us. I feel as carers, not there in the beginning, they let us get
on with it and then wait until the point where we can’t do anymore and then they will come
in to support us. But then it’s too late sometimes, could be more worse for us to support
the other person. Well I think because of the mental health
aspect as well in the start when you talked about not considering yourself a carer I didn’t
because I wasn’t associating it with the stuff that people do when caring for say somebody
with dementia or with a physical disability. And so when I saw at my GPs that there was
a carers network I thought, well that doesn’t really apply to me. But actually I eventually
signed up for it and they were good. They said yes we can do x, y and z for you and
make sure you get a flu jab. Practical things like that you know to make sure that my health
was good because I suppose my health needs to be good to look after him.
That’s right yes. I think in order to take help from other people and other family members
you’ve got, I would be looking at as weak and not able to look after my own child.
So I did not want to approach him in that way. But then it came to a point I say well,
if I don’t get them involved how far will I go. So I had to use a different strategy,
like you know for them to come and help. And they were very supportive you know and that’s
helped a lot. And I realise that if you don’t take help if it’s out there then you are
on your own and it will not do any good to your health and your wellbeing yourself. So
having the family, friends and networking with others has helped a lot and I have seen
the difference now. I’m one of these people who insist on being
incredibly independent and you know, oh I can cope with it all on my own. But when I
did, when I told people what was going on... I think when people knew about it they were
so supportive and it was an enormous source of help. It really was. And our families don’t
live locally, so it was quite a distance for them to travel to be with us but they offered
to if we needed their help. And just friends, being able to offload everything onto friends,
it’s so very good to just sit and talk, they let me talk and just pour everything
out. They are really understanding. Then a few of them have been through it as well and
know what’s going on. I think as well, for me at least, I feel that
by being able to talk to other people, friends, family or whatever about what was going on
to do with my mom’s health it’s kind of made me more able to talk about everything
else. You know you kind of like get rid of… Yes more, you get confident to talk to people.
Yes exactly. And I think that in that way it’s kind of like made me a lot more balanced
and that before for a long time I was quite an insular person. Still I’ll go, but I
just was never one to like talk about problems or like bad stuff. And I think that by doing
that it kind of like paved the way I suppose to being able to talk about other things and
being honest about how you feel about certain things. Because I think that’s part of the
problem isn’t it? If you hold everything in for too long then it’s…
Yes we hold everything inside. We don’t want people to know what’s happening to us.