After damaging her knee while on holiday, my wife needed to have a new knee fitted.
This is a major surgery and it takes many weeks to recover from the surgery, during which time my wife needed caring for.
I was lucky, she needed very little help in dressing, apart from the surgical stockings she needed to wear 24/7; also the only caring she needed for toileting was a morning bowl of water for the first few days.
That said, the amount of additional work involved was enormous. Normally there are 2 of us, running the home and we manage chores around the house and garden between us. For a period of about 6 weeks, Lynn was unable to do any of these chores.
The shopping still had to be done, there were meals to cook, clothes to wash and dry, the house had to be kept clean, the dog had to be walked and the garden had to be maintained. All this had to be done as well as the part time job I do from home.
None of these are insurmountable, but after a month, I was exhausted and some of the gardening and household things we both do, had to be neglected.
The point of this blog is to show, that this was exhausting and stressful, even though we knew it would be for a limited period of perhaps 6-8 weeks.
Consider therefore the carer who knows it is for months, possibly many years and whatever happens it will not improve.
Until this time, I had been fortunate, caring was only necessary for short periods of a week or so, during illness.
It opened my eyes to the needs of carers, financial help for equipment to help, both for the person living with a disabling illness and to help the carer cope. There is also a crucial need for support on a social and psychological level, this can take the form of social events, at which both carer and cared for can attend.
In extreme circumstances where a carer cannot easily get away there may also be a need for relief, to enable the carer to spend a few days away.
All of which requires funds, and is a major reason why many of us work with MNDA to help in whatever way we can to raise funds, and to raise awareness of the problems people living with MND face as well as the problems their carers face.