Are you prepared to be cared for?

So this week is Carers Week and the theme this year is are you prepared to care?

So I thought it would be an idea to write a blog entry about the other side; are people with carers prepared/ready to be care for?

I don't know about other carer's, but I have a small battle everyday when caring for @raspberrytalk. He means well but he does make it difficult. For example, he hates having to use his wheelchair. He'd rather fall to the floor than be in his wheelchair; and when he does fall (as he so often does!), I feel responsible! I don't know why, but i do. I do sort of understand why he hates going in his wheelchair, but I just wish sometimes he would see that it makes my life a little bit easier, as well as his own.

The other day he tried doing some light gardening and ended up rolling down our front garden. I only just about managed to get him back into the house. This is the trouble with raspberrytalk; as soon as my back is turned he will try and do something he can't actually physically do and the smallest of tasks will make him exhausted for rest of the week.

Just before christmas he cut his thumb very badly because he was trying to help me dry some things up. We ended up spending christmas eve in hospital waiting for him to have a small op on his thumb to repair his severed nerve and artery. I really don't want to go through that again......

The above are only a few examples of part of my battle caring for raspberrytalk. I think the reason he's like this is because he's the sort of person that never wants another person caring for him. I'm sure he's not the only person like this. I know when I'm not well with the flu or something I hate people fussing and trying to do everything for me.
I also think raspberrytalk is still trying to come to terms with the fact that he is ill and always will be. He will never be the person he used to be, nor be able to do the things he could before. I know for a fact he finds it frustrating that I have to do so much for him. He has also told me that he wishes that I didn't have to take care of him.

Just recently, we were having dinner with his mother. Raspberrytalk's arms decided to stop working properly, shaking and twitching, and he couldn't lift them. There was no way he could hold his knife and fork, so I had to feed him. Afterwards he told me how humiliated he had felt ... not just because I'd had to feed him, but also because it was in front of his mother. He said it's one thing to be falling apart, but worse to let the people you love see it.
He got so upset by this I held him and told him it's o.k. What else could I do?

CARERS WEEK
CARERS UK