Caregiving and your own health — the checkups you keep skipping

Disclaimer: This article is informational only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please schedule regular checkups with your healthcare provider and seek immediate care for any health concerns. If you're struggling to prioritize your health while caregiving, discuss this with your doctor or a social worker.

You remember that you're supposed to get your blood pressure checked. You think about scheduling a dental appointment. You know you should get that mole looked at. And then your parent calls, or you remember there's something you forgot to handle for them, or the day just disappears in the way days do when you're responsible for someone else. So you don't call your doctor. You don't schedule the appointment. You tell yourself you'll do it next month.

And then next month comes, and there's something else. And the appointment you meant to make doesn't get made. And the checkup you were supposed to have doesn't happen. And months pass, and you realize you haven't been to the doctor in so long that you couldn't even tell your parent's doctor what your last blood pressure reading was. It's a strange state of affairs, really, to realize that you know your parent's health history better than you know your own.

This is something that happens to so many caregivers, and it happens gradually in a way that makes it hard to notice. You're not choosing to ignore your health. It's just that your parent's health feels more urgent, and your own health feels like something you can put off. You feel fine, mostly. You don't have time for a doctor's appointment. And frankly, you're not sure you have the emotional energy to deal with whatever you might find out if you went.

But here's what's actually happening: you're making a calculation that your health is less important than your parent's health. You're deciding that your own wellbeing is secondary to being a good caregiver. And that calculation is costing you more than you realize. It's costing you in ways you might not see yet, but that will compound over time.

The Cost of Neglect

The research on caregiver health is clear and consistent: caregivers who don't maintain their own health have higher rates of depression, anxiety, heart disease, and early mortality. This isn't a coincidence or a sign that people who become caregivers are less healthy to begin with. This is what happens when you spend years putting your own needs at the bottom of the priority list.

Stress affects your body in real ways. Your blood pressure goes up and stays elevated. Your immune system becomes less effective at fighting off illness. You gain weight or lose weight depending on how you're coping. You sleep poorly or you sleep too much. You eat worse. You're more likely to get sick because you're run down. And because you're a caregiver, you probably can't afford to be sick, so you push through it anyway, which makes it worse. You develop a cold that turns into bronchitis because you never actually rest and let it resolve.

There are also the things you don't notice until they become serious. The chest pain you attributed to stress turns out to be something cardiac. The persistent fatigue you thought was normal turns out to be diabetes or anemia. The memory issues you blamed on caregiving stress are the first signs of something more serious. The joint pain you've been ignoring gets worse and worse until you can barely move. You've been walking around with high blood pressure for years without knowing it, and now you have organ damage.

And then you have a crisis of your own, on top of the crisis of caregiving. Now you're sick and you're also responsible for your parent. And suddenly you realize what your neglecting your own health has cost you. You realize that being a good caregiver actually requires you to take care of yourself, because you can't care for anyone if you collapse.

Why We Do This

The reason caregivers skip their own checkups is complicated and worth understanding about yourself. Some of it is practical. You don't have time. There's always something that needs to be done for your parent. Your schedule is not your own. Getting an appointment and then going to it requires energy and coordination that you're not sure you have. You have to arrange for someone to be with your parent while you go, or you have to do it in the early morning before they wake up. The logistics feel enormous.

But some of it is emotional. There's a part of you that believes that being a good caregiver means putting yourself last. That's what mothers do, right? That's what devoted children do. We sacrifice. We put other people first. We don't make a fuss about our own needs because that's selfish, and good people aren't selfish.

Some of it might also be avoidance. You don't really want to know if something's wrong. If you don't go to the doctor, then you don't have to find out that you have high cholesterol or that you're pre-diabetic or that you need to make changes. Ignoring it feels easier than dealing with it. And caregiving is already all-consuming, so the thought of adding health issues on top of that feels unbearable.

And some of it might be a combination of believing that there's no time and believing that you don't matter as much, which together create a pretty powerful barrier to taking care of yourself.

The Small Things First

Taking care of your own health doesn't have to be complicated or time-consuming. It can start very small. Can you commit to calling your doctor's office tomorrow and scheduling a physical? That's it. You don't have to go yet. You just have to make the appointment. Just that one small action can shift something.

Once you've made the appointment, mark it on your calendar like it's as important as your parent's doctor's appointments. Because it is. Your health is not less important than your parent's health. It's equally important. You need to be alive and functional to care for them, which means you need to take care of yourself. If anything, your health is more important in this situation, because your collapse would leave your parent without their primary caregiver.

If making an appointment feels too overwhelming, can you ask for help? Is there someone who can remind you to call, or who can even make the call for you? Sometimes permission and support from someone else is what it takes to do the thing you've been putting off.

The Preventive Piece

The beautiful thing about scheduling regular checkups is that they're preventive. You're not necessarily finding out you're sick; you're checking in on the state of your health and catching things early if there's a problem. Your blood pressure gets checked. Your weight gets tracked. Your doctor asks you about your mood and your stress and how you're sleeping. You get to talk about the fact that you're caregiving and you're stressed and how that's affecting you.

And sometimes just having that conversation with a medical professional helps. They can give you concrete suggestions. They can tell you that yes, caregiver stress is real and it's affecting your health and here are some things you can do. They can refer you to other resources. They can make you feel less alone in this. A good doctor understands that caregiver stress is a real health issue and will work with you to find ways to protect your health within the constraints of your life.

Making it Non-Negotiable

The other thing that helps is making your health care non-negotiable, the way you've probably made your parent's health care non-negotiable. You don't skip your parent's medication because you're busy. You don't miss their doctor's appointments because something else came up. You treat their health as important, as something that has to happen.

Your health deserves the same treatment. Once you've scheduled the appointment, it's not something you cancel unless it's a true emergency. It's on your calendar. It's something you're doing for yourself because you matter and your health matters.

The Permission You Need

You're allowed to take care of yourself. In fact, you're required to, if you want to continue being able to care for your parent in any meaningful way. Your health isn't secondary to their health. Your wellbeing isn't less important than their wellbeing. You matter, just as much as they do.

And the fact that you've been neglecting your health doesn't mean you have to continue. You can decide today to do something different. You can make one phone call. You can schedule one appointment. You can start treating your health like it matters, because it does.

Disclaimer: This article emphasizes the importance of maintaining your own health while caregiving. Please prioritize regular medical checkups and don't hesitate to seek professional medical care for any health concerns. If you're experiencing depression, anxiety, or other mental health challenges related to caregiving, reach out to a mental health professional.