Looking after yourself is part of the job
The companion is often the person under the most strain and the one nobody asks about. Exhaustion reaches the patient.
A companion on a long stay is doing unfamiliar work in an unfamiliar country in a second language, usually while frightened. That is a heavy load and it is rarely acknowledged.
Your own days
During therapy hours you are usually not in the room, because sessions generally go better without an audience. Those hours are yours and they are worth planning: meals, rest, something to occupy you, and time outside the building.
Companions who spend the whole stay in a corridor are the ones who struggle as the weeks go on.
Ask for help early
If a transfer feels unsafe, say so before you injure yourself. If the demands at night are more than you can sustain, say so before you stop sleeping. Both are common and both can be adjusted.
The team can only change what it knows about, and companions are notably bad at reporting their own difficulty.
Before you commit to coming
Two questions are worth settling early because they change everything else: whether you can be away for the full length of the programme, and whether anyone else can share the load for part of it.
A companion who has to leave halfway leaves a gap in the programme, not just in the room.
Topic
More in Companion and family support
- Why a companion is required rather than suggestedTherapy occupies a few hours of the day. Whoever is there carries the rest — and delivers the programme for the eleven months the patient is not with us.
- What a companion is actually taughtHandling, the home programme under supervision, equipment and skin checks — and when not to help.
