‘I can’t do this anymore,’ she told me between sobs.

‘I’m not sleeping.  He wakes me up convinced there is someone in the house and won’t go back to sleep until I have checked to make sure.  Then he says he has to use the bathroom.  But he just sits there, he doesn’t have to go.  In the morning I make him his breakfast but if I don’t constantly remind him to take a bite, he just picks at it.  He wears a diaper now – you don’t want to hear what keeping him clean has been like’.

I made a call and we had a caregiver there that evening.

When I asked Kim what she did when the caregiver arrived that night, she said she just slept.

When the caregiver came the next day, she took a long walk.

‘It was the first time in I don’t know how long, I’ve been able to think about anything else but him’, she said.  ‘It felt like I could breathe again.’

When I asked her why she hadn’t called for help earlier she said it was because it felt like admitting failure.  Like needing help meant she wasn’t a good wife.

‘Now I see that getting help actually allows me to be a good wife – because I don’t have to be the nurse all the time.  Someone else showers him, makes his meals, and cleans him up.  When I come home I’m refreshed – more loving – myself again.’

We’ve heard stories like this so many times. It’s why we do what we do.