Hello. Happy New Year. How's it been going so far? Good, good. Made your new year's resolutions yet? Broken them yet? Did you see the new year in? Did you see the fireworks? Weren't they good? The wonderful thing about new year is that whatever its origins it is now a festival pretty well free of religious association, so we can all celebrate it together. All of us. Unless of course we're busy.

Okay, so I'm clearly (context taken into consideration) driving at the fact that New Year's doesn't soundly become magical if you're caring. I raised this question, funnily enough at Carers of H2G2 (do drop by and visit) and it turns out I'm not the only one whodr New Year was marred somewhat by other concerns. To be fair, I'm sure plenty of other people who aren't carers had a rotten new year for all sorts of reasons. I don't mean to be unkind, but I'm not writing about them/you.

The problem, I think, is that everyone is sold New Year's as a new start. What are you going to do this year? What changes are you going to make? What's going to be different? What's going to be better? Well if you have a long term disability, and your life is ruled by the fact of that disability then there doesn't seem to be any real prospect of a change. To a certain extent you can, if you have a physical illness, sit in a chair and raise a toast (assuming your illness allows you to stay awake until midnight) to the new year, even if you don't have much confidence in what you're saying. Mental illness may not allow even that, sitting down doesn't mean you stop being bi-polar, and we don't have drugs to mitigate against dementia yet. I don't like playing illness top trumps though (too many categories), and the essential point is that it can be harder to hope when one year looks as if it will be much like the last.

But then years are essentially arbitrary markers of time. Nothing is guaranteed to change from 1 moment to the next, its part excuse for a party and mark random marker to break down the infinity of passing time. Your world can change at any time for too many reasons to innumerate and even with your health, or rather, the health of the one you care for, it could still improve. This year, for example, my wife is appealing against the decision not to award her a higher level of disability living allowance. If she wins the appeal (if), our financial status will improve just a bit. We'll be able to save a little, for our future, or for a crisis. We might be able to assuage her terminal boredom by spending money on things she can do with her time. It's a one off example from our lives, not yours, but when you have a long term or permanent health condition playing such a big role in your life then you have to find hope for things other than ‘it will get better'. Whatever happens, try not to lose it altogether.

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06.01.14 Front Page

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