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Carers

Being a carer at 71

Started 14 March 2026 · 12 replies · 99 hearts · read 1k times

ÖzlemIzmir, TR · 14 March 2026
4 months ago

A question rather than an update: Being a carer at 71

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

My household has adjusted to about half of this and the other half is causing small daily friction that I have not known how to raise.

What I am after is the version of this that works when nobody is helping, because that is my situation and most accounts assume otherwise.

The arrangements are the hard bit for me. Nothing medical has been difficult; the organising has been relentless.

I will come back and say what I settled on, in case it is useful to the next person asking this.

33

SerenLlandudno, UK
#1

The guilt about spending money or time on myself was the hardest part, and it is still the hardest part two years in.

7me too 5

GwythFishguard, UK
#2

I would say ask about a carer's assessment if you have not. Mine took an hour and unlocked things I did not know existed.

5

IzoldaVilnius, LT
#3

What helped was one hour a fortnight that is genuinely mine, arranged formally, so that it cannot quietly disappear.

6

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#4

Stepping in to say what happens here when somebody describes a very tight situation: they get answered without a trace of judgement. That is not luck, it is the habit of the room, and it is worth protecting.

16

KeeleyBlackpool, UK
#5

Eating properly is the thing that goes first when I am stretched, and it goes without me noticing, and this circle is where I noticed.

8

LinnetKendal, UK
#6

Thank you for writing this down. It helped.

10me too 1

SableCape Town, ZA
#7

Wren, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

The exhaustion was already there before any of this. Working out what was new and what was simply caring took me a long time.

4

LandoLeeds, UK
#8

I do mine at six in the morning because that is the only twenty minutes of the day that belongs to me.

3

GigiNaples, IT
#9

My sleep is broken for reasons that have nothing to do with this, and separating the tiredness has been the hardest analytical problem.

8

ZoraSarajevo, BA
#10

Sable said something I want to sit with for a second.

What I would say to somebody starting is to build it into something you already do, because anything additional will not survive a difficult month.

7

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#11

Two things, both boring. Nobody here can tell you what to do about your week. And describing your own week is genuinely useful to somebody planning theirs.

17

FitzLimerick, IE
#12

What I found is that the logistics assume a person with a spare afternoon, and I have not had a spare afternoon since 2019.

8