Need advice

[boredandrestless]

What would you do if you were me?

Bit of background: my working background is in childcare, when got to about 4 I had to give up work as his autism was affecting things much more, have now been his carer for 3.5 years. I'm bored at home but quite tied, have done some small courses. Tried volunteering for homestart but struggled without a car to get to and from family's houses. Struggle on and off with anxiety and depression.

I decided to have a complete change of path, and to enrol on an access to Healthcare course, the plan being to then do adult nursing at uni. This would be 4 years of study, but a higher paid job at the end of it that I could do anywhere.

Started the access course 3 weeks ago, and I am SO anxious. Can't sleep well,am overeating, and although I did ok getting my first couple of assignments in I am really struggling now. If I even think about getting some work done I start panicking. I can't concentrate and focus to get anything done and then I panic more, it's a vicious circle.

I'd planned on popping into the counselling room at college today, see my tutor, and had a GP appointment booked for later on today. I can now do none of this as DS was sick in the street this morning. So I am stuck at home next 2 days at least!

I'm worried I made a big mistake and I don't know what to do.

Another cause of worry is that when I do the nursing degree I will be relying on ex sticking to his contact arrangements so I can work night shifts on placement. I am now thinking this is giving him too much credit as he is already trying to upset my plans on college days by dropping DS late when he knows I am tight on timings. Being late also upsets DS and throws him out of routine, it makes the start of the day really stressful.

AND when I called uni to check entry requirements, they said my GCSE grades in maths were fine, but the subject prospectus from uni came at the weekend and it says GCSEs have to recent, eg less than 2 years old for the nursing degree. I was NOT told this when I asked, and it's too late for me to start them now. Even if it wasn't I don't think I could juggle having to redo gcses as well as doing the access course in one year.

I'm sat home worrying with sicky DS and looking up nursery nurse jobs.
It's days, I'm trained. Trouble is the pay is SHIT and I have a DS to support.

Do you get maintenance for your ds? I would say stop relying on the ex, if he's going to play games like this I doubt you can rely on him for night shifts

I get £10 per week maintenance.

The trouble with not relying on him for the night shifts is that I would be needing to pay a nanny or child minder who is willing to do nights with a child on the autistic spectrum and I'd be doing so out of very little money.

I'd forgotten how slyly obstructive he could be and you are right I doubt I can rely on him.

Anyone?

I have two DDs with AS and was most of the way through a foundation degree when things went very badly wrong for DD1. There followed a year of horrendous battles for treatment and school provision plus the diagnostic process for DD2.

The stress of those challenges prevented me from concentrating and in the end I walked away from the course with one research project and two essays left. I had passed everything else with decent marks but just couldn't do that last bit with so many other things to deal with.

I sometimes feel resentful that I put in so much time and effort and never got the chance to finish.

I wouldn't try to do this course unless you feel that things will remain reasonably stable for your DS and you can find a supportive network of people to care for your DS when you need it.

I am probably being very negative but I would cut my losses if it was going to be this hard and possibly harder throughout the course.

Could you try again when your DS is a bit older or do you not think things will have improved by then?

Thanks for sharing your experience Gold. What a shame for your to be so close to completing!

The idea was that as ex has DS 2 nights a week anyway (to keep his csa payments down ) I could use those 2 nights on placement weeks, and if there was a 3rd night in the same week I could ask my mum.

I don't know. I'm finding the heavy workload hard to keep up with already and my anxiety has kind of given me a complete mental block on the whole thing. :-( As well as the training it's making me wonder if I have the personality that could manage a fairly pressured job like nursing!?

DS is fairly high functioning in some ways, but not in others. He's very full on, doesn't sleep well, needs a lot of reassurance and constant supervision. He is very verbal, not violent as a rule, usually fairly compliant.

Whatever I decide I can't stay at home and just be carer any longer!

I feel a bit like it's now or never to change career.
I do like working in childcare but the pay is not good and I don't find it mentally challenging (could do evening course or something though to keep brain busy).

I dont have much advice on this.

But the requirement for GCSEs is covered in your adult access course. Access courses are for people who have been out of formal education for over two years. So ofcourse you wont have GCSEs less than two years old.

Hth

Hi bored :) I don't know what to say as I haven't experienced what you're going through. Right now as you know I'm struggling with anxiety myself, I'm not sleeping very well, I feel sick and edgy all the time and its affecting all areas of my life. I'm so unhappy!

I'm not sure if I can keep putting myself through this, I don't want to become depressed but I feel that's where I'm headed.

If you really want to do this course, I think you should have other measures in place so that you don't have to 'rely' on ds's dad. Have you seen a gp for help with the anxiety? As has been mentioned - could you do the course another time?

I'm sorry I can't help you more, I wish I hadn't enrolled on mine at all.

I can appreciate that you need to find something else to focus on. Is there something which doesn't require you to concentrate to hard?

If it had just been a case of plodding through and finding information I would have finished the FD but the stress destroyed my ability to process information in the way you have to for a degree and think about it deeply.