Caitlin Moran: my advice to carers

When you’re looking after someone ill – someone very ill; months ill; years ill – you sigh a lot. It’s the sigh let out by simple, pressurised things that put themselves to the use of others: like the quiet huff of a kettle, or an iron, or an old-fashioned train, shuttling from Manchester to Carlisle. You sigh instead of talking about how you feel. You sigh instead of running away. You sigh because that is what the body does when it sustains an impact – it expels a breath, automatically. Caring for someone you love when they are ill is like sustaining a hundred impacts a day. Something going wrong. A night of pain. Their fear. It is your honour – and your only plan