If you are a caregiver for your spouse or partner, the change in your relationship can be stressful.
You and your partner share feelings and experiences from before the transplant, but it can still be hard to adjust to new roles and responsibilities.
To start, try to understand the feelings you both might have during the transplant process.
- Your partner might feel useless or like they are a burden.
- You might feel:
- Stressed as you balance work, family, and caregiving responsibilities
- Exhausted, with low energy, and limited sexual desire
- Resentful towards your partner
- You both might feel:
- A loss or intimacy
- Tension in the relationship
- Emotional, physical, social, and sexual changes in your relationship
Look for ways to balance the roles of caregiver and partner.
- Make a list of what you can and cannot do for your partner (the patient)
- Write down the caregiver responsibilities that cause you stress
- Share your thoughts with your partner
- Ask friends and family for help
Throughout the transplant process, communicate openly and honestly. Talk with each other about:
- How you feel
- Your individual and shared experiences
- Caregiving responsibilities
- Decisions you can make together
- Changes in sexual intimacy
- Your expectations and needs as a couple and individually
Talking honestly with your partner can prevent:
- Serious misunderstandings
- Damage to the relationship
- Resentment
Focus on yourselves individually and as a couple.
- Plan time to be alone. Give yourself space to relax and recharge.
- Spend time together as a couple, not caregiver and patient. Talk and do activities not related to transplant.
- Ask friends and family for help with specific activities, like:
- Driving to medical appointments
- Household chores
- Going to the pharmacy or grocery store
- Learning more about transplant
- Bringing a meal
- Need to work less
- Have less income
- Have more medical or daily expenses
- Consider individual and couples counseling (if you are both interested)
- Hire in-home health aids or respite care.
- Learn about financial resources. During the transplant process, you and your partner might:
- need to work less
- have less income
- have more medical or daily expenses
- Ask your transplant team about options if you and your partner are worried about having children after transplant.
- Don’t wait until after transplant
- Before transplant, make a reproductive plan with different options based on different recovery outcomes
If you are a caregiver for someone who is not your partner, these strategies can still help you and your partner have a healthy relationship. You must still balance family and caregiving responsibilities.
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