{"id":424458,"date":"2026-05-12T20:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/424458\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:51:08","slug":"hannah-mcqueen-when-to-move-a-spouse-into-a-rest-home-and-how-to-handle-the-guilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/424458\/","title":{"rendered":"Hannah McQueen: When to move a spouse into a rest home and how to handle the guilt"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most, it happens by degrees. First, you take over managing the medications, appointments, the driving and cooking. Soon it\u2019s the showering, the dressing, the getting in and out of bed. Then it\u2019s dealing with the ablutions and the accidents.<\/p>\n

Slowly – and then all of a sudden – the entire dynamic of your relationship has changed. You\u2019re no longer just a spouse; you\u2019re a carer. One who is on duty 24\/7, likely with frailties and health needs of your own. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe power dynamic changes,\u201d says geriatrician Dr Cheryl Johnson. \u201cYour whole focus becomes the person you\u2019re caring for.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with that focus, Johnson says, the carers begin to neglect themselves. <\/p>\n

\"GeriatricianGeriatrician Dr Cheryl Johnson.<\/p>\n

There is beauty in caring for someone you love: love expressed through sacrifice. But ultimately, that\u2019s a romanticised way of looking at it. It ceases to be beautiful when it becomes dangerous. If you collapse as the carer, there may be no one left to care for your spouse. In sacrificing yourself, you can end up placing both of you at greater risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t think about what those last years might actually look like,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cWe tend to jump from now to assuming we\u2019ll simply go to sleep one day and not wake up.\u201d <\/p>\n

The reality of the gap between now and then is often far uglier than that. Without proactively managing ageing, many will experience a slow, inexorable decline: mobility goes, memory falters, independence erodes. <\/p>\n

You adjust and adjust and adjust \u2013 and what would have horrified you in the beginning slowly becomes normal. For many people, there comes a point when they realise they can\u2019t keep going like this anymore, or a crisis forces a reckoning. Sometimes, that crisis provides the permission they may have been longing for: to make a change that probably should have happened much earlier. Either way, emotionally it\u2019s a mess. <\/p>\n

You feel guilty for feeling like you failed them or broke your promise. But there\u2019s also some relief that you\u2019re no longer carrying the burden alone. Then comes the guilt for feeling relieved. <\/p>\n

It can become a vicious cycle \u2013 and it\u2019s very common. Johnson tells the story of a woman caring for her husband with dementia. She did everything around the clock for years \u2013 until she couldn\u2019t anymore. \u201cShe said to me, \u2018I feel like I failed him.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

From the outside, Johnson says it was obvious to see that she hadn\u2019t failed, she had simply reached the limit of what one person can bear \u2013 but that doesn\u2019t make the feeling of failure disappear. <\/p>\n

So how do you cope with it? <\/p>\n

\u201cReframing is a helpful strategy,\u201d psychologist and grief counsellor, Dr Geraldine Tennant says. \u201cYou can reframe your thoughts about breaking the \u2018in sickness and in health\u2019 pledge by seeing that underpinning this pledge is a principle of protecting your loved one \u2013 you are protecting them by placing them in care and thereby honouring your promises and vows.” <\/p>\n

Even though you feel guilty, guilt is not a good decision-making tool. You\u2019re not choosing between \u201ccaring\u201d or \u201cnot caring\u201d – you\u2019re just choosing a different kind of care, one that is better suited to the need. <\/p>\n

\"HannahHannah McQueen. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n

Care facilities have trained staff who work shifts, get meal breaks, days off, time to rest and recuperate \u2013 whereas you are only one person.<\/p>\n

Plus, being relieved of the relentless demands of caregiving may also allow you to simply be their spouse again – to sit with them, talk to them, hold their hand \u2013 rather than managing their healthcare. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s another emotion people don\u2019t like admitting to in all this: resentment. <\/p>\n

Not resentment towards the person themselves, necessarily \u2013 but towards the relentlessness of the situation. The exhaustion, the isolation, the loss of your own life. Because caring is supposed to be selfless, even thinking those thoughts can make you feel ashamed. Pretending they don\u2019t exist doesn\u2019t make them disappear, though. It just leaves you suffering quietly and alone. <\/p>\n

With all of that going on emotionally, it\u2019s no wonder the decision is usually made much later than it should be \u2013 once the need is urgent. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey cope,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cAnd then there\u2019s a crisis,\u201d like a fall, that results in a hospital admission and a sudden need to find care, quickly. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, you can\u2019t just stroll in from the street and secure a place in a rest home. There is a process \u2013 and it can take weeks, or even months to work through. <\/p>\n

To give you an idea, you start with a Health NZ \u201cNeeds Assessment\u201d that you or your healthcare provider can refer you for. It will cover things like your mobility, cognition, safety and needs, which will determine the level of care required \u2013 for example, home help, a rest home, hospital-level care, or a dementia ward. Home help may be subsidised, or you may need to pay privately. <\/p>\n

If the answer is a care facility, it\u2019s then your job to find an appropriate one – because not all of them can cater to all needs; availability is often scarce and some have wait times of up to six months. Layered over all of this is the financial reality that good care is expensive, and not everyone is entitled to public funding (there\u2019s a whole separate article in that) or has the luxury of choice. <\/p>\n

But the takeaway from the experts here is don\u2019t wait until you\u2019re drowning before you start the process \u2013 that will add to what is already enormous pressure. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re reading this and thinking, \u201cthis is us\u201d, or \u201cthis is my parents\u201d, there are a few things worth remembering. <\/p>\n

Loving someone doesn\u2019t automatically make you capable, qualified or best-placed to meet their care needs – those are very different things. Love doesn\u2019t magically override exhaustion, ageing, or physics. Choosing care doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ve stopped loving them \u2013 if anything, it means the opposite. You\u2019re doing a hard thing because you love them. You\u2019re choosing safety over pride. You will feel guilty \u2013 before, during and likely long after the decision \u2013 but that doesn\u2019t make it the wrong one. They may be upset – and you will carry that. Even when it is the right decision, it might not always feel like it. At some point, caring for the ones you love stops being about effort, sacrifice and promises made in entirely different circumstances – and starts being about capacity. Invest in strengthening your own health. Neglecting yourself increases the risk for both of you. <\/p>\n

When you\u2019re carrying too much, all alone, trusting others to help carry the load is the right thing to do. <\/p>\n

Sometimes the right decision still feels heartbreaking but that doesn\u2019t make it the wrong one. <\/p>\n

Hannah McQueen is the founder and director of Age Brightly. She is also the host of The Next Bit podcast on iHeart Radio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most, it happens by degrees. First, you take over managing the medications, appointments, the driving and cooking.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[95,536,9853,168660,27905,18326,22137,134,527,1345,221,296,700,162504,2683,111,139,69,9831,28029,1963,637,223,61,6041,1316],"class_list":["post-424458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-and","tag-care","tag-column","tag-examines","tag-guilt","tag-handle","tag-hannah","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-home","tag-how","tag-into","tag-latest","tag-mcqueen","tag-move","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-question","tag-rest","tag-series","tag-spouse","tag-the","tag-to","tag-weekly","tag-when"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}