If you think you have a ‘life experience’ and you would like to share with us and
possibly on our website – please contact Jan Chamberlain 01373 455854 or
Caroline Mead 01749 836606 for more information.
“Hello, I'm Tim. I'm a Carer” Two small sentences which may well have saved me from
drowning.
For nearly thirty years, my wife has been repeatedly affected by intermittent attacks of
stress-related illness, some of them requiring hospitalisation, all of them bringing normal
working life to a halt.
About two and half years ago, my wife just said one morning that she didn't feel as if she
could cope with the new term at her FE/HE college. “I've been here before,” I thought,
calmly. No warning bells rang. “A month away, and some medication, and then it's back to
work.” I gave up my current contract, sorted out the college (we had no visits at all from
management or 'friends' from the staff room) and then I turned myself into school taxidriver, cook and cleaner, while my wife sat and thought about whatever she silently wanted
to think about. We had both worked in education at a fairly high level, and it all stopped
overnight.
We had some savings, and when I got round at the end of the first month to see the Job
Centre people, they said – basically – come back in six months time when you have
nothing. I should have shouted for detailed advice at that point, but I'm independent,
resilient, experienced – or so I thought - and was too involved in getting sucked into the
black vortex of my wife's continuing illness to struggle for help and advice on how to sort
out the financial and pension complexities – an area where I have never ever felt at home
or confident.
Weeks, then long winter months rolled by uncharted and without change. Our daughter, in
the midst of A levels, decided very sensibly that her greatest priority was looking after
herself, and became almost overnight a grown-up independent person, though still living at
home and requiring three hours transport a day. Tough cookie.
When she left to go to university, I finally had time to take stock and look at the tangled
mess we found ourselves in. By this time I was having to take over all my wife's daily
admin: bank letters, car loan, house bills, all the work which she had so effortlessly
completed in her previous healthy life. Our small circle of friends shrank almost overnight,
as people could not, or did not know how to interact with someone who was clearly
enmeshed in the downhill spiral of a mental illness. I was by now doing all the tasks which
required interfacing with the outside world, such as shopping, driving, as well as managing
the house for such things as planning, food and cleaning.
Four walls do not a prison make, but your own home can become a cage without you
realising it. The limitations of not going out for a walk on a sunny afternoon, of not
speaking to another person for several days, of not being able to move outside the highly
structured and unvarying routine of daily life, they all creep up on you unnoticed. To other
people living around us, I had quite simply become reclusive, politely answering the
inevitable “ How is your wife ?” with a defensive and anodyne reply “She's not bad, thank
you” at the same time as a silent internal voice says quietly “No change, no progress, no hope.”
Then, one day, threatened by a phone call from some persistent financial agency, I called
the Citizen's Advice Bureau for guidance. I am not generally a believer in guardian angels,
but that day one was working extra diligently on my behalf, for the coincidence of a
volunteer with specific experience in working with a mental health charity, and my obvious
inability to cope with even simple questions about the type and extent of support my wife
was receiving, led to the suggestion that I might be in need of help as much as my wife –
but for different reasons.
When you have spent a lifetime being in charge or with jobs of fairly serious responsibility,
the realisation that you have failed is like a sudden storm; needing “help” is not something
which normal people need unless they are ill, and I wasn't ill, quite definitely wasn't ill, and
quite definitely did not need or deserve help.
Unknowingly I had reached a metaphorical brick wall and could see no further roads
ahead. I agreed to a visit from a support agency, to explore what help was available.
Enmeshed in a long list of support jargon came the suggestion of contacting someone who
worked in adult care support, with phone numbers and a name.
I chickened out for two, perhaps three weeks, wary, suspicious, even afraid of admitting,
admitting what ? I just didn't know. Then one morning, coming across the piece of paper
with the contact details, I reached for the phone and dialled into sunshine. A voice made
an offer of an appointment, of a visit to me at home; this was not the anonymous voice of
social services officialdom with a check list and a set of business objectives and quotas;
this was a voice of someone who was experienced in helping carers with no horizon,
someone who understood words like 'frustration' and 'defeat', someone who was prepared
to travel to my house-cage and listen and talk.
The meeting took an hour, perhaps and hour and half, or even more. I now have lots of
leaflets with all the contact names and numbers, summaries of my rights and benefits
(which I never knew I had !), information on confidentiality, access to the website, an
invaluable book on Everyday Emotional Wellbeing, Education Courses, and enough
information on the NHS Partnership to make me realise that I am not alone in being a
lonely carer.
But the inch-thick pack of paper is nothing compared with the tremendous relief that I can
ask for support from someone who understands the maze of caring for a person with
mental health problems. Not just one person, one dedicated and highly skilled
professional, but a whole team behind him with the knowledge, skills and experience of
working with thousands of people like me in Somerset.
I was immersed in loneliness, drowning in ignorance, overwhelmed by a loss of direction. I
am still there to a large extent, and it is going to be a long process back to being fully in
control. Much will depend on the progress my wife makes, if at all, but now I have a
chance to put back something into the system to say 'thank you' for saving me from
drowning.
My carer's Assessment Worker asked me to a carers' meeting . We then sat round and I
took first step back to being more of a real person again, when I said “Hello, I'm Tim. I'm a
Carer”.