The Spouse/Partner
Takes on extra roles and responsibilities
- Patient feels too sick for household tasks
- Patient can no longer drive
- Patient can no longer work
- Patient needs major or minor home medical care
- And, the children . . .
Notes:
In addition to the potential new role of caretaker, the spouse may have to take on many roles and responsibilities that previously belonged to the patient
These can be exhausting, yet oftentimes the spouse feels that they shouldn’t complain - after all, look what the patient is going through - and so they try to be stoic and just keep taking on more and more
Financial stresses drive the spouse to take on extra work to make more money, and this causes additional stress and fatigue
Often forgotten in all of this is the children - both parents are exhausted, one parent is ill . . . Yet studies show that children are deeply affected by serious illness in the parent, perhaps more than they let on