Together · 3 min · For caregivers
Keepingyour own appointments
The caregiver's own health is the one thing the whole house is standing on, and the first thing that gets cancelled.
Your own dental check was in March. You moved it. Your own blood test, the eye appointment, the thing the doctor said to come back about. All moved, or quietly dropped. This is about putting them back.
The steps
Two small steps,in your own time.
Open your calendar and book one appointment for yourself that is overdue, at a time when cover is likely.
Then message one person and ask them to sit with the person you care for during it.
Why they go first
Your appointments feel optional and theirs do not. Yours clash with theirs. Going means arranging cover, and arranging cover is work. And there is a quieter reason: it feels wrong to tend to yourself while someone you love is ill, as if attention were a fixed sum and yours should all be going to them.
It is not a fixed sum. It is more like a well, and you are the one carrying the bucket. If you go down, everything stops.
Book them now, together
Sit down once with the calendar and book everything that is overdue: dentist, doctor, optician, the screening letter you ignored, the physio for your back. Book them for daytimes when cover is likeliest, and book them in one sitting so it is one unpleasant hour rather than six.
Then treat them as fixed. Theirs are fixed; yours are fixed. The world managed when you took them to their appointment; it will manage when you go to yours.
Arrange cover as an ask
Each of your appointments is a two-hour ask: "could you sit with Mum on the 14th from ten to twelve so I can see the dentist." Specific, bounded, and the kind of help many people would rather give than cooking. If you are part of a tree here, put it on the calendar as a sit. If not, see the page on asking for help.
Tell your doctor what you are doing
When you do get there, say it in the first minute: "I am caring for someone with a serious illness." Your doctor needs to know, because it changes what they look for. Broken sleep, back strain from lifting, weight that has gone up or down, a low mood you have been calling tiredness: these are the ordinary injuries of caring, and they can be helped when someone knows to ask.
The small ones
Not everything needs a professional. Your medicines, if you take any, at the same time as theirs. Your water bottle when you fill theirs. Your walk when they sleep. The little appointments with yourself count too, and they are the ones nobody will book for you.
Check in once a month
The first of the month: is anything overdue for me. Two minutes with the calendar. It is the appointment that keeps the others.
WE · TRIBE
Try itwith someone.
Tell one person you are trying this today, and ask if they would like to do it with you. Small things done side by side are easier to keep.
Try it today
Today, try: book one overdue appointment of your own, and send one message asking someone to sit for that hour.
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