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The pharmacy run when you cannot leave the house

Started 1 November 2025 · 16 replies · 141 hearts · read 3k times

KeeleyBlackpool, UK · 1 November 2025
9 months ago

Something I have been sitting with: The pharmacy run when you cannot leave the house Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

Practical question, and possibly a silly one.

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.

I have a specific situation coming up and I would like to plan for it properly rather than improvising on the day, which is what I did last time.

No hurry. I have a fortnight before I need to decide anything.

47

SerenLlandudno, UK
#1

Something I have learned here is that looking after myself is not in competition with looking after him, even when it feels like it is.

10

SableCape Town, ZA
#2

My routine is completely non-negotiable because it has to be. Everything else in my week bends and this does not.

7

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#3

Speaking as a facilitator: nobody owes anybody at their own table an explanation, and this circle will keep saying so as often as it needs to.

16

GwythFishguard, UK
#4

What Sable described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

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

4me too 4

LandoLeeds, UK
#5

Gently disagreeing with Wren, or rather adding the other half of it.

My GP asked how I was doing as a carer, once, unprompted, and I cried in the appointment, which surprised us both.

5

ÖzlemIzmir, TR
#6

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

11

PipBristol, UK
#7

Something practical: I got my collections aligned with the ones I already do for somebody else, and it saved me a journey a month.

9me too 9

FitzLimerick, IE
#8

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

ZoraSarajevo, BA
#9

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

9

GigiNaples, IT
#10

Fitz, 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.

6

IdrisCardiff, UK
#11

Gently disagreeing with Gigi, or rather adding the other half of it.

What I got right was keeping this very simple. No tracking, no apps, no projects. One thing, once a week, written in a notebook.

6

IzoldaVilnius, LT
#12

The thing that nearly stopped me was a fortnight where his needs increased and I had no capacity for anything of my own.

6

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA
#13

Something that helped was telling one member of the family what I am doing, so that somebody other than me knows.

9me too 7

PamSouthport, UK
#14

Gently disagreeing with Idris, or rather adding the other half of it.

I have found the check-ins here more useful than the circles, because two lines on a Tuesday is what I can actually manage.

12

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#15

Facilitator note: the guides cover the practical side of this reasonably well, and what this thread has that they do not is somebody's actual Tuesday.

13

BrennaEnniskillen, NI
#16

That is a kinder way of putting it than I have managed about myself.

10