Tired after a long day is one thing. Tired every morning, for long enough that the tiredness has started changing how you handle everything else, is another. This guide is for the second kind. It will not give you a score. It will give you a week of plain records and a few questions you can answer honestly.
Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.
Notice whether rest still works
Ordinary tiredness goes away after sleep or a day off. If you have had a full night's sleep, or a weekend when someone else took the shifts, and you still wake up flat, pay attention to that. You are not failing at resting. The rest you are getting is not reaching the part of you that is worn out.
Keep a seven-day count, not a mood log
Feelings are hard to act on. Counts are easier. For seven days, write down four things each evening: the hours you were on call without a real break, the number of times you were woken during the night, the number of times you left the house alone for more than an hour, and the number of things you put off for yourself. Do not judge the numbers. Read them together at the end of the week. If you cannot remember the last time you left the house alone, that is information too.
Ask the questions that show depletion
Answer these without deciding in advance what the answers mean. Do you feel relief when an appointment, a visit or a call gets canceled? Have you stopped replying to people who used to hear from you regularly? Do small routine tasks now take you a long time to start? Do you snap at your parent over things that would not have bothered you before you started this work? Have you stopped noticing whether you are hungry?
If most of your answers are yes, you are not just tired. You are running with nothing held back. The next step is a change in how the care is held, not a better attitude.
Check your own health, then ask a doctor
Burnout is not a diagnosis, and this page cannot tell you whether something medical is happening to you. If your sleep has changed for weeks, if you have lost weight without trying, if you feel hopeless most days, or if anything in the list above worries you, book an appointment for yourself and describe what you wrote down. Bring your seven-day count. A doctor can ask questions this page cannot. If you ever have thoughts of harming yourself, contact emergency services or a crisis line right away.
Pick one edge this week
You do not need a full plan to act on what you wrote. Pick one edge: a block of two hours each day that belongs to someone else, a named person who covers one specific shift, or a short service with a set start and stop time. For each option, write down three things: who will do it, what they need to know before they start, and what happens if they cannot come. If you cannot answer the third question, the option is not ready yet.
Then look for the help that already exists near you. The local help page for St. Louis caregivers lists where to start there. If you are somewhere else, Start Here explains how to use this site. The home page, Permission and a Plan, is the place to begin writing a backup plan on paper.
Tiredness that does not go away is not a character flaw. It is a signal that the arrangement is asking more than one person can give, and that is a problem you can start to change this week.