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Therese: You know I've become his carer and his protector.
That role of changing from being a wife to that element of carer, that's massive.
Sometimes I’m just terrified.
Song: I feel so helpless. There's so little I can do.
I want to take your pain away, and know just what you're going through.
I feel so lonely now so much depends on me.
I'm a nurse and I'm a carer, got to hold us all together.
Mmm... Mmm...
My man is broken.
Steve: The more I've talked with others beset by medical limitations or disablement,
often it's the partner, the wife, who has the bigger struggle,
the harder time and often that gets forgotten.
You know people come up and will ask Therese about me and I’m ok,
God's looked after me - with her,
but what about her - you know, what about the carer and that role.
Therese: It drives me nuts particularly if it’s people that I haven't seen for a long time
and the first thing they say to me is 'how is Stephen?".
I kind of feel like I'm a person too,
and ask that but it makes me feel like I'm a bit insignificant.
I know people don't intend to make me feel like that,
it’s just the care and the concern they have for Stephen,
but sometimes it just comes out wrong.
Therese: At work, work has been my rest sometimes, my escape.
Its really difficult to see your partner in constant pain twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
At least I get a break from it, like it's always in the back of my head but it's not just full on in your face.
And I try and go to the gym as another way of coping
with the physical demands and the emotional and mental demands.
It's probably only four or five years into this injury that I realised I need to have a break
and it's not selfish of me to say “look, I need to go away,
I need to just have a couple of days to myself”. I now do that every six months.
Stephen: Carers leave.
Therese: and I need to not feel guilty about that.
Stephen: I think being given permission by our psychologist is really important just to say you need this.
Therese: And I think too that Stephen gives me permission
and Joash quite enjoys it when mum goes away (laughter),
he's always happy when his mum goes away.
Stephen: Apart from the few hours of cleaning the house before mum gets back!
Therese:(laughter) But I can only do that with the blessing of my family and I get that wholeheartedly.
Therese: I went through a time of a lot of anger, a lot of anger at God for why,
why did this happen to us, we had the world at our feet.
But I think I learned that just continually asking that is just wasting time
and you just keep living in this anger and this frustration that is not quality of life.
But it took a while, took quite a while to come to terms with and just yeah let go of that anger.