u/AristoDeity

I work with a client who has multiple caregivers full-time and they recently lost the only other caregiver that gave a damn and did a good job. Now I’m absorbing all of this caregivers duties, on top of my own, while absorbing the other main caregivers duties already. (We all should have the same duties, but not everyone does them??)
I wake up every morning wanting to call out, wanting to go back to sleep, and wanting to forget that I even have a job. Anytime I think about my job I feel sick. I’ve been consistently constipated from stress and have had a constant migraine for the past 2 weeks since this other caregiver has left.

I don’t know if it’s just the client/current work load, or if I should leave caregiving as a whole. Has anyone else been in a similar situation and how did you fix it?

-I love the client to death, I just don’t love how much constant pain I’m in and the constant fatigue/brain fog that’s coming with being their main person, when they should have multiple people absorbing equal parts to make the workload doable, when we’re constantly moving 3x our weight.-

Basically I’m coming to realize conversation is becoming very difficult with my client that I’ve seen fulltime for 6-8 months now. I want to be there to listen and chat, but I just have no energy for it anymore and am beginning to feel those electric shocks through my body telling me I can’t do this anymore (like fight or flight shocks, but I have to stay professional and ignore them which is not comfy at all)

I love them, and do love this job because I can help people in a way that really matters - I’m thinking I need to add other clients and cut my time down with them so they aren’t my ONLY person anymore. The issue with this is:
1.) they save most/all tasks for me. They recently lost the only other good caregiver they had and now have 1 very iffy caregiver taking on the other days full-time. If I leave, they will likely not be receiving consistent care in areas they need .
2.) I can’t fathom doing anything more “gross” or unsanitary than I’m doing now, and am having crippling anxiety surrounding being matched with other clients after seeing the cases these agencies accept.

Is this even a good position for me anymore? I’m great at what I do, like the tasks and the hygiene care, but I’m beginning to not enjoy the social aspect especially as I see people beginning to lose cognitive ability. It’s not just not enjoying it but it’s becoming a bit agonizing and I’m unsure if I’m fit for this type of work. I don’t snap or anything or decline care like I read about some doing, but I just don’t really want to be there the entire time and am staring the clock down even harder than I did in previous jobs.

I’m unsure where else to go from here however, and everyone is telling me “this is the best job you’ve had,” which is totally true, but I want to be able to give my 100 in jobs and lately it feels like giving my 100 physically and mentally hurts me. Idk what to do.

In other in home caregiver experiences, what are some of the most challenging/least sanitary cases you’ve been assigned?

In every team setting dude. Like 3 people will be the folks management talks to abt what has to happen, and 4 ppl will be not doing anything, while management asks 1 person to actually do it and make sure it happens.
In other situations, imagine a whole team of people, everyone should be “a person” on that team, no one should be “the person” right? or if someone is “the person” it’s because everyone is “the person” for something different, but no, here I am being “the person” for all the actual work, while others are just people who come in and do the bare minimum/sit on their phones. The whole time everyone’s asking me why X, Y, or Z aren’t done, saying I’m slacking, when there is an ENTIRE team of people meant to be doing the same thing. My back hurts, my brain hurts, I just wish I was better at doing the bare minimum and being rewarded for barely doing shit, instead of being given more work since I do so much. Anyways. Showed up today to see that nothing that needed to be done had been done, multiple things had been left, and it’s my responsibility to fix everything that happened despite it being very physical work that can quite literally break someone’s body if it’s all placed on them.