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Carer's allowance, appointments and no time to be ill

Started 18 June 2025 · 20 replies · 179 hearts · read 3.9k times

IdrisCardiff, UK · 18 June 2025
about a year ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Carer's allowance, appointments and no time to be ill

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this was, and how long it went on for.

The thing that has surprised me most is how much of this is about other people rather than about me.

Not looking for a plan. Just company and whatever anyone has found.

60

KeeleyBlackpool, UK
#1

No advice, just recognition. That sounds exhausting and I am sorry you are in it.

9me too 8

GwythFishguard, UK
#2

Reading the opening post, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

11

BramberSteyning, UK
#3

Different experience here, for balance. Mine did not improve and in the end I stopped, and that was the right call for me. Both outcomes exist.

6

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#4

Before anyone offers a remedy: what has been described here is on the list of things that need a clinician today rather than a thread. I am going to be firm about that, kindly.

19

BrennaEnniskillen, NI
#5

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.

5

LinnetKendal, UK
#6

I would take that to a clinician rather than to us, and I would do it this week. Not because it is definitely serious — because it is the sort of thing that is much easier to rule out than to worry about.

10me too 2

SableCape Town, ZA
#7

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

Yes. All of this. I had the same in my third month and I remember thinking there was something specifically wrong with me, which there was not.

6

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA
#8

Mine lasted about seven weeks and then lifted over a few days. I cannot tell you why. I can tell you it lifted.

8

LandoLeeds, UK
#9

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

8

ÖzlemIzmir, TR
#10

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

9

ZoraSarajevo, BA
#11

The phrase that unlocked my appointment was asking what specifically she wanted me to watch for. It moved us from reassurance to a plan in about thirty seconds.

6

GigiNaples, IT
#12

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

9

PamSouthport, UK
#13

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

8me too 3

FitzLimerick, IE
#14

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

6

IzoldaVilnius, LT
#15

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Yes to the burping. It is real, it is unbeautiful, and it does settle.

7

SerenLlandudno, UK
#16

It got worse before it got better for me, which I wish someone had said. About ten days of worse.

5

IdrisCardiff, UK
#17

For what it is worth, the trial data on this is thinner than the confidence of the internet would suggest. Worth knowing when you read the posts.

11

KeeleyBlackpool, UK
#18

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

9me too 8

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#19

Thank you for writing this. I am not going to add information to it. I am going to say that what you have described is very common and very rarely said out loud.

20me too 4

BramberSteyning, UK
#20

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

7