Burnout Consultant and dementia specialist. Working with women in the sandwich generation

In 2018 I sat down at my computer one morning and the words on the screen weren't words anymore. They were wobbly hieroglyphs. I couldn't read my own emails.

The night before, the first panic attack had hit in the middle of the night. Veins full of ice, loss of sensation down my left side. My husband was seconds away from calling the emergency services when we realised what it was.

And still, the next morning, I was at my desk by eight. I told him there was no way I could take the day off. Most of what I was holding couldn't be passed to anyone else. I believed that to be gospel.

Then my brain did something I'm grateful for now. It was as if it said: I have been screaming at you for over a year and I can't do it anymore.

I asked my husband Daron to read out the urgent emails. We replied to a few. Within twenty minutes the laptop was shut. I didn't open it, or touch my phone, for six months.

That was my burnout. It is the reason this work exists.