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- Member
Wed Aug 14, 2019 11:54 pm
Hi Everyone.
I cared for my Dad, first of all as a distance carer for over three years after Mom died, then moving in with him to be his full-time carer in 2007 when his health and mobility declined. He passed away in June 2008. I suppose in many ways I was lucky, I was able to stay in the family home and managed to find paid work again a few weeks after Dad's funeral. It should, in theory, have been the beginning of a new stage of my life, but I feel in many ways I have not moved on. I had a little bit of money left to me and hoped to travel a bit, but then I had a spell of ill health and an accident in the years that followed, which kept me closer to home, and also knocked my confidence. Also, being in my fifties and in a small town in the Midlands, I found paid work harder and harder to get, having been made redundant from my first post-caring job due to the recession in 2009, and have had to rely on a diminishing number of short-term contracts.(Thank heavens there is no mortgage!)
Right now I feel really down. I work mainly on a self-employed basis, most of my work being on an ad-hoc basis for the local authority. The good news is that a lot of it involves supporting current carers (and some former carers),which I am really happy doing, but now that I am in my sixties, and with my SRP age goalposts having been moved, I feel less than totally secure financially, especially now that I have had to draw down some of my private pension to supplement my sporadic earnings. More than that, I seem to be more and more isolated, my family (cousins basically, as I am an only child and don't have children of my own) have never been that supportive, Things have come to a head in the past year. In October I had to say goodbye to my lovely cat and then around Easter time I had a god-awful virus, the combination of which seems to have left me really down and quite depressed. None of my family, some of whom live within half a mile of me, seemed at all bothered that I was really poorly with the virus, let alone that I have been left with depression in the aftermath. I get the strong impression that "you've been a carer, if you are ill you can jolly well look after yourself!". One cousin even said, in so many words, well, you've bounced back from everything in the past, why can't you deal with this? I've had some counselling which has now finished and has helped me realise that I need to look after myself a bit better, but it really worries me that this - having to cope with crises entirely on my own - is going to be my future! Has anyone else been through anything like this?
I cared for my Dad, first of all as a distance carer for over three years after Mom died, then moving in with him to be his full-time carer in 2007 when his health and mobility declined. He passed away in June 2008. I suppose in many ways I was lucky, I was able to stay in the family home and managed to find paid work again a few weeks after Dad's funeral. It should, in theory, have been the beginning of a new stage of my life, but I feel in many ways I have not moved on. I had a little bit of money left to me and hoped to travel a bit, but then I had a spell of ill health and an accident in the years that followed, which kept me closer to home, and also knocked my confidence. Also, being in my fifties and in a small town in the Midlands, I found paid work harder and harder to get, having been made redundant from my first post-caring job due to the recession in 2009, and have had to rely on a diminishing number of short-term contracts.(Thank heavens there is no mortgage!)
Right now I feel really down. I work mainly on a self-employed basis, most of my work being on an ad-hoc basis for the local authority. The good news is that a lot of it involves supporting current carers (and some former carers),which I am really happy doing, but now that I am in my sixties, and with my SRP age goalposts having been moved, I feel less than totally secure financially, especially now that I have had to draw down some of my private pension to supplement my sporadic earnings. More than that, I seem to be more and more isolated, my family (cousins basically, as I am an only child and don't have children of my own) have never been that supportive, Things have come to a head in the past year. In October I had to say goodbye to my lovely cat and then around Easter time I had a god-awful virus, the combination of which seems to have left me really down and quite depressed. None of my family, some of whom live within half a mile of me, seemed at all bothered that I was really poorly with the virus, let alone that I have been left with depression in the aftermath. I get the strong impression that "you've been a carer, if you are ill you can jolly well look after yourself!". One cousin even said, in so many words, well, you've bounced back from everything in the past, why can't you deal with this? I've had some counselling which has now finished and has helped me realise that I need to look after myself a bit better, but it really worries me that this - having to cope with crises entirely on my own - is going to be my future! Has anyone else been through anything like this?
