With due apologies to Juvenal, bowdlerising his phrase from the Satires.

Before I kick off, a subject matter warning. If you find discussion around end-of-life care and death upsetting, please don’t read further. Ignore this post. Honestly, I won’t mind in the slightest.

As I have touched upon in previous posts, I find myself in the position of full-time carer for my elderly husband. This change to our circumstances, while not entirely unexpected, has happened quickly.

Best Beloved has been in declining health for some years now. Various conditions have piled their ignominy upon him. Overall, he has borne them as best he can, and between us maintained some sort of quality of life. We acquired a walking aid a few years ago, which he was using until late last year. In order to ferry him to and from various clinics we also acquired a wheelchair. However, since a fall just before Christmas, he has become more or less completely housebound. Getting him to the car, though only a few steps in our small home, has become a logistical exercise fraught with dangers along the way.

I have to be around for him all the time. He needs help to get in and out of bed. He needs help with visiting the lavatory, help with personal care, making sure he gets his medication … the list can be endless. While I am happy to take on these responsibilities – when Best Beloved asks why I do, I remind him we made vows to that effect at our wedding, and he would do exactly the same if our roles were reversed – they have had deleterious effects on my daily routines. My day job as a model maker has almost completely stopped, for example, and I find I am unable to leave the house for more than an hour or so without worrying about potential cataclysm.

Family and friends rally round as they can, but I am effectively alone in my caring duties. The suggestion of seeking outside help led to discussions between me and Best Beloved. We decided to investigate some form of respite care, where he would go into a care home for a short period, leaving me free to have a break of some kind. We can afford to pay for this service. I began to look at what was available, but felt I didn’t know enough to make suitable arrangements. I was recommended to seek professional advice. Over the past month, therefore, I have been in contact with our GP surgery, they referred me to the local council social services, and I’ve now been contacted by two partner organisations.

I am feeling rather overwhelmed. All this time, thinking we could cope, finding we couldn’t, and yet we only had to ask for help.

Of course, the dire times in which we live mean local authorities are stretched to capacity. I am due to be given a carer’s assessment but it will be in a month and held over the phone. There are people I can call on if I think I need help between now and then. One of the organisations is able to provide a care assistant who can sit in and look after Best Beloved once a week for a morning, afternoon or evening. I am going to see if that can be arranged sooner rather than later.

While my – our – situation is not dire, even the short time I have been properly caring for Best Beloved has opened my eyes to the hard and unsung work carers of all kinds perform. Often family members, often unpaid, they look after the needs of the disabled, ill and elderly. My mental health has taken a real battering this past few months, so I can only begin to understand how others cope. Happily, it looks like I can get support, so that I can be cared for while I care for my husband. This is a comfort.

At the other end of things, Best Beloved and I both know he will die one day. It might be today, tomorrow, next month. We just don’t know. There is the scaffolding of a care network being put in place to help us both right now, but when the end comes all that will stop. It sounds horrid, but we both feel that will be a relief of sorts. While our current problems will end, they will be replaced by a whole set of new problems I must deal with.

I am sort of prepared for that event, but I admit I’m not looking forward to it. I hope I can find a support network to help me through it when it comes.