In late 2024, my partner was diagnosed with IgA Vasculitis, and, in his case, this led to kidney failure. Before that moment, illness was something distant, something that happened to other people. Overnight, it became the centre of our lives.
What followed was more than a year of relentless treatment: chemotherapy, dialysis, and constantly changing medications. But beyond the clinical language, there was the lived reality. The quiet, invisible weight that settled into every part of our lives.
The night we got the call for his kidney transplant is something I will never forget. It was the middle of the night, just as we were heading to bed, when the phone rang. We rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, adrenaline cutting through exhaustion.
When we arrived, it felt like stepping into a different reality. The hospital was like a ghost town, silent, with emptier corridors than I had ever anticipated. Knowing why we were there made everything feel surreal, as if time had paused just for us.
For him, the illness was physical, invasive, and exhausting. For me, it became mental, emotional, and all-consuming. I became the organiser, the carer, the one who held everything together. When one person’s world shrinks due to illness, the other’s expands to carry what’s been lost.
There were moments that marked a shift in our relationship early on. I remember sitting beside him when he was so weak he couldn’t even lift his arms to eat. I hand-fed him apple slices as he lay connected to machines and tubes. That was the moment I realised everything had changed. It felt natural because it had to be but also deeply unfamiliar. I was no longer just his partner; I had become his carer.
That role came with both physical and emotional weight. He had a line placed in his chest for dialysis, which meant even the simplest forms of affection had to change. I could no longer lie on his chest or hold him without thinking. Every touch became careful, measured. His body, once strong and familiar, became something fragile that I had to protect.
When we moved into our first home together, it was me who painted the walls, carried the furniture, and built everything from scratch. What should have been a shared milestone became something I had to take on alone. At the same time, I was managing university, friendships, and my own health but the truth is, something always had to give, and often it was me.
I experienced burnout more times than I can count. There were moments when it felt like all my effort led nowhere, as we were met with setback after setback, more bad news, more uncertainty. My mental health suffered quietly. It was in the small, private moments that it hit hardest; waiting alone for him to come home from dialysis, lying awake at night unable to sleep through the anxiety, or standing in the shower where I finally allowed myself to cry.
There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes with loving someone through chronic illness. You try to be strong, to be their anchor, but in doing so you often silence your own needs. I felt exhausted, but I rarely said it out loud. I needed support, but no one my age truly understood how much my life had changed. Over time, I lost friendships. People checked in at the beginning, but as months passed, the messages became fewer. Life moved on for them, while ours stood still.
At the same time, I felt immense gratitude, for his survival, for every small improvement, but alongside that was grief. Grief for the life we had imagined, for the normality we lost, for the version of us that existed before illness. Holding both gratitude and grief at once is something I’m still learning to navigate.
Despite everything, this experience deepened our relationship in ways I could never have anticipated. We became completely committed to each other, relying on one another in ways that went beyond what most people our age experience. My compassion has grown, not just for him but for others. This experience has changed me as a person, and I continue to grow from it every day.
Six weeks ago, he received a kidney transplant from a deceased donor. Even now, it’s difficult to fully process what that means. The gratitude we feel, alongside the awareness of another family’s loss. While the transplant has restored some level of normality, it is not a simple ending.
Life now comes with new challenges: the risk of rejection, the effects of immunosuppressants, and the possibility that the disease could return. “Normal” looks very different for us now, and finding peace in that is an ongoing process.
But if there is one thing I have learned, it is this: no one in this position needs to be alone.
Loving someone through chronic illness changes you. It can be isolating, exhausting, and overwhelming but, it also creates a depth of love and understanding that is hard to put into words. Your partner becomes your world, and while some may not understand that, they don’t need to. Unless you have lived it, you cannot fully grasp what it asks of you.
I wish someone had told me at the beginning to trust in the moment, to stop trying to control what cannot be controlled, and not to live in constant anticipation of what might go wrong next. Letting go of that need for control is something I am still learning.
For now, I have learned to find comfort in the present, in the quiet, ordinary moments we fought so hard to get back. For me, that is enough.
This article formed part of BRAW Magazine Issue 5: Mind, Mood, Mentality. You can read more of Issue 5 here.
Featured Image Illustrated by Alice Pollard
