WE all hope retirement will be a pleasant and productive time, shared with family and friends. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Illness can strike unexpectedly, despite our best efforts to stay healthy. You may find yourself living with a sick partner and naturally their needs become your priority but 'taking care of the carer' is also of vital importance: let us help to get you through.

Of course, your partner’s medical needs are your first priority, with their psychological needs a close second. They are likely to be anxious and even depressed and need your support in coping.

Just how you handle the new realities of your life will depend on the nature and severity of your partner’s illness. But whatever their situation, you need looking after too and there are some things you can do to help yourself.

Be sure you continue to have plenty of exercise. Keep up the golf or the gym if you can. If this is something you previously did with your partner, find someone else, a friend or neighbour, to do it with.

Even if it is just a morning walk, this is valuable time for you to concentrate on your own needs, and can clear your head for whatever the day will bring.

You need time away from the sick room, doing something you enjoy. Carry on with your own social activities to whatever extent is possible.

If you don’t think your partner can be left alone, see if a friend will come in for a couple of hours, and offer them a small service in return.

If your social activities previously centred on your partner’s interests, perhaps this is an opportunity for you to do something new, like joining a book club, or a bridge circle or taking up line dancing.

It’s often easier not to do any of these things. You may feel you shouldn’t be out enjoying yourself while your partner is feeling terrible.

You may feel you have to put on a brave face and deny your own needs. You may have an irrational fear that something bad will happen to your partner just when you are not there to help.

But looking after your own needs is a way of helping your partner. They are likely to be anxious about their current and future health; you need to stay strong to support them. Being a martyr doesn’t help either of you.

A partner’s illness can also be an opportunity to find new things that you can do together.

Reading aloud to your partner is interesting and enjoyable, and can give you endless new things to discuss. Listening to talking books together is also good.

And there are all the films and TV series you missed seeing that are now available on DVD. You might find you do more talking together than you used to.

Having a sick partner can also be a wake-up call. It’s a reminder that there are practical things that you should now be doing, like sharing knowledge about your household and financial affairs.

Can you both cook well enough to keep you going if one partner is incapacitated? Do you both know what medication the other one takes? Do you both know where the important documents are filed? And the password to the online bank account?

But even more important, many people find that a health scare can put life into perspective.

Now is the time to do the things you really want to do together, but have been putting off. What you can do obviously depends on your partner’s health, so climbing Mount Kilimanjaro might be out of the question.

But travel to visit people or places you want to see may still be possible. Are there local spots you would like to visit, or revisit? Places you would like to show the grandchildren?

When did you last go to the zoo? Would you like to take out a subscription to the opera, or upgrade your football tickets? Do you want to sponsor a child, or an overseas aid project? Do you both want to take up line dancing? The possibilities are endless.

This sort of advice is hardly new. It has been put much more elegantly by Dylan Thomas who urges that we “Do not go gentle into that good night./ Rage, rage against the dying of the light” and rather more prosaically by my favourite football commentator: “Don’t die wondering”.

Having a sick partner may make it harder, but even more worthwhile. Just do it.