Sister Eileen Cannon left religious work in the US and returned to care for her father, Nicholas. As a full-time carer she is paid £73 a week by the State, and gets a break for just four hours a week."As a carer I live life on the edge, a constant state of stress and raw emotionality. I have to deal with depression and fatigue. "My father is 85 years old. I returned from working in the US to look after him. At that stage he had been living alone for over 20 years since my mother died and was always very independent. But because he lived alone there was no one to notice the dementia creeping in. He also suffers from Alzheimer's disease.
"By the time I came along, five years ago, he was well and truly demented. He is suspicious of everyone, he hides things, imagines events, suffers loss of memory and has poor comprehension of most things. He has no sense of time and often gets up very early in the morning.
"The sad part is that nobody knows what is going on in his mind. Sometimes he says `You don't really know what is going on,' but you only get a glimpse of what he must be going through.
"It is very painful to watch him. Having to do it alone is even more traumatic, as one sibling lives in England and the other, who lives close by, hasn't surfaced in years. "I have no support system, no one to drop in for a few hours to cover for me, except for someone who comes for four hours on a Thursday as part of a FAS scheme. There was a woman who would stay over, but that cost me £25 a night and I only get £73 a week for my carer's allowance.
"Physically he is in very good shape and has plenty of energy, much more than me. Luckily he does not roam, but I still do not like to leave him on his own. I would just love to have someone to take over, for just one night every two months. It would be a great break.
"If I could realise a wish it would be to have one person share the burden of caring for my loved one on a 24-hour basis."