Laura Mauldin was 27 when she met the love of her life in 2005. Less than a year into their relationship, her partner's cancer returned.
"It was simple, really," Mauldin, a sociologist and disability scholar, wrote in her new book out Feb. 10, "In Sickness and in Health," where she chronicles her own caregiving love story and those of others. "I was in love with her. I squeezed her hands and told her, 'We will get through it.'"
But Mauldin soon found out that nothing about caregiving is simple. And the American health care system isn't set up to help people get through it, Mauldin outlines in the book, by way of inaccessible health care, lack of caregiver supports, expensive treatments and an overall de-valuing of sick people and those with disabilities. Her love for her partner had nothing to do with the level of care Mauldin could provide − or the ultimately unbeatable strength of her partner's disease.
Mauldin said she was hesitant to share that she wasn't there when her partner died.
"There's a romanticization of the idea of 'the one,'" Mauldin told USA TODAY. "Because we don't have robust social safety nets, that love that 'the one' has then gets transformed into unending, unrecognized labor that really threatens the stability of our relationships."
