I care ... because I CARE!
I don't see it as work. I see it as my privelige, my duty, and my way of giving grateful thanks for all the years of hard work my mother put in to bring me to this point.
Sure, I'd love to have a vacation - wouldn't anyone after 30 years without one? But with no family, no caring neighbours, and paid respite of 2.5 hours a week, there's not much chance of that.
Yes Excalibur, I'm a 24/7 carer, but IN NO WAY do I see my care as inferior. It is FAR superior to even the 2.5 hours a week I get.
And yes, we do all have choices, but perhaps we already recognise that and have already made our choices. That doesn't make us envious. It might make us weary, it might sometimes give us down days, but we can all remind ourselves that it WAS our choice, that we could have been selfish and thrown our loved one into a nursing home to be treated like a lump of meat (so many are!) and watched them fade away in a dusty corner, but we chose to give our loved one quality care, aware of the consequences of our choice.
Sometimes, putting others first can be a reward in itself.