A day in the life of me

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7:00 Hmm, that’s blood.

8:00 Get to work, but the gate is closed (it should open at 8).

8:20 Gate opens because accountant lady appears with a key fob (by this time there are four of us standing outside). There are three people in reception, none of whom appears to have thought “maybe we should open the gate”. I can tell this is going to be a productive day.

9:30 find out manager has been in a minor car accident and needs to wait for his car to be towed before getting a taxi into the office, so much for not having to do his job today.

10:00 Hmm, that’s less blood. That’s good.

10:30 Becky comes into kitchen while I’m in there alone. She eventually says ‘morning’ after I look at her. This is the first time she has spoken to me in two months. I say ‘morning’. End of conversation. I put the milk back in the fridge without asking if she wants it.

11:00 Why am I here?

11:10 Email from Becky saying she’s taken a call for me from someone from somewhere that sounds like a recruitment agency who is asking me to phone him back. Totally unprofessional for a recruiter to phone my employer, but ignoring that… Thanks for giving me the option to speak to him?! I can’t resist a snarky response “looks like you’re not the only person to find my LinkedIn profile interesting”.

12:30 Becky has loud conversation about sandwiches standing about 2 metres from my desk. It grates a lot when she does this because we had a ‘mediation’ in March after which we agreed to ‘make an effort with each other but also give each other space’. I thought this was a dumb and all-encompassing statement which in no way helped to clarify acceptable conduct, but she has actually managed to find a way to violate it. She has been doing this a lot lately and it really stresses me for whatever reason. I could feel my anxiety rising rapidly and I had to go for a walk to convince myself not to hand in my notice there and then (serious).

13:15 Back from my walk, haven’t handed my notice in.

14:00 Spend the next few hours with my manager trying to find a workaround for a really annoying bug in other people’s software. Literally the only productive thing I did today was to work around a problem inflicted upon us by someone else.

17:15 See my counsellor and recount what seems like an extremely eventful two weeks. She thinks I should email HR lady to make something happen, because my constant wondering of whether this supposed meeting is ever going to happen is causing me a lot of day to day anxiety, and I’ve had a lot of promises from HR lady with no actual follow through. It’s true. But HR lady is usually in on only Mondays and Thursdays, and I don’t want to trigger anything stressful this Thursday as I have an interview after work, and then Becky is on holiday next week, which gives me some breathing room. So… yes, but not immediately.

20:00 I have to do this all again tomorrow?!

22:30 I don’t think I can do this all again tomorrow….

Interview!

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I have been offered an in-person interview following a phone interview I had last week. I’m surprised that of the 3 phone calls I’ve had so far, this is the one that turned into an interview, but whatever, I’ll take it. I would like this job for the simple reason that it’s a 20 minute walk from my house.

I was feeling stressed about work, but suddenly now it seems far less important. I am not really sure what I’m going to be walking in to tomorrow, with having two days off… will be my boss be upset I didn’t inform the customer I was off sick? Will he think I’m having too much time off? Will HR lady start taking an interest now? Anxious thoughts, some catastrophising, but I don’t feel too apprehensive.

In less good news, I’ve been bleeding again. It only looked like a small amount, so I decided to run this morning as I planned to, but I kept the pace low and didn’t go as far as I had intended. I might regret this tomorrow. I suspect I have some kind of gastritis that is occasionally triggered by exercise and causes my stomach lining to bleed, but that’s me guessing – doctors haven’t managed to diagnose me, they just stick cameras in me (weeks or months after the bleeding has stopped) and scratch their heads. I think I need to assume I’m right on the gastritis front and start altering my diet to reduce stomach acid. I really don’t understand how I can go months without it and then it happens twice in a few weeks, though.

I felt unusually hungry when I got home, which isn’t really a good sign that my stomach is functioning properly, so I had a few slices of toast before eating quite a big lunch. I feel a bit sick now, but take your pick from possible causes: 1. Bleeding, 2. Eating a lot, 3. Stress, 4. Heatwave, 5. Running in a heatwave…

Weekend

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The weekend was mixed. I did Parkrun on Saturday but I felt quite sick afterwards, and whereas I’d normally continue running another 8-10k, I just walked home. It was the first time I’d run in almost 2 weeks because of an ankle injury, so that was disappointing. But I ran 16k on Sunday just fine, so I was happy with that. It was probably still a side effect from the Citalopram.

More generally I felt pretty bad on Saturday but much better on Sunday.

I elected to take Monday off sick from work. Uh oh, sick day #7 this year. My manager is back on Tuesday, and I’ve run out of motivation for dealing with the client myself when it’s not my job and things aren’t going well. On its own, it wouldn’t be such a big problem, but I feel so uncomfortable in the environment at work anyway due to the whole Becky thing. I think that taking sick days just because I can’t face going to work is a strong sign that I’m not going to be here much longer.

But I did some ‘work’ over the weekend for myself. I am forever recording (guitar) stuff on my phone and then never listening to it or sorting it out because it’s too much effort to get it onto my PC. So I started writing an app to record and automatically upload to a cloud storage provider. In only about 5-6 hours, I’ve got it working end to end, so now all it needs is some GUI polish and I’ll stick it on the Play Store. I have an existing app out there that makes me a few hundred pounds a year, so hopefully this will add to that.

It’s interesting to compare this with work. At work lately it’s been a struggle to achieve anything at all, but here, I’ve got something complex working in an unfamiliar technology in around 6 hours. It’s amazing how productive I can be when I don’t have to waste energy on office politics.

Aftermath

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I took today off sick because I felt that life had got a bit on top of me again. This is now the sixth day I’ve had off sick this year. My contract says I will be paid for ten, but I still feel like I’m taking too much time off. Work is a pain at the moment anyway because my manager is on holiday and the customer is expecting me to do his job to keep them happy. Unfortunately, I’m not a manager and I don’t have the authority to make things happen. I’m also pretty demotivated by being unhappy at work, so… I’m not exactly going above and beyond here.

I do still feel a bit off it, though, which I think is the citalopram. I only took it to deal with work so it’s fair that my employer absorbs the cost of me not feeling well.

I feel content and perhaps slightly relieved that I’ve chosen not to continue with it. I think I had been stressing myself over whether or not to take it. It might have helped but it raised so much long term uncertainty.

Now I feel like I’ve worked my way through that crisis.

Citalopram day 1

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So… I bit the bullet, or more precisely the pill, and took my first dose last night. I had trouble sleeping but otherwise felt OK until this afternoon when I started feeling headachy and nauseous, but it’s not too bad, and, let’s be honest, it could just be anxiety. I’m not sure if the sleep problems were the tablet specifically or just the fact I was worried about finding out what the side effects were. I woke up at about 2:00 and I knew I was supposed to be worried about something, but I couldn’t remember what for a while.

But…

I’ve had second thoughts. All my problems are work. Work is an unhealthy environment. I felt wonderful when I had a week off. I felt just like myself again. The answer isn’t to take medicine, it’s to remove myself from the unhealthy environment. Medicine is a decent second option if you can’t do that… but I can.

The fact is that I’m lucky. I can take a few months being unemployed with no significant effect on my finances. Most people don’t have that luxury. I’m panicking because I feel trapped, but I’m not trapped.

I don’t have to do anything right now, but if I do find myself needing to do something, I can quit. I’m not trapped. It’s OK.

Now… if I get another job, in a new environment, and find I still can’t cope, then that’s a different story. But I think for now, it’s worth entertaining the hypothesis that the environment is a bigger problem than me.

Citalopram day zero

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Trigger warning: suicide, down at the bottom.

LIFE updates!

Phone call with IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapy) was fine and I’m on the CBT waiting list, which is going to be a few months.

Gastroenterology appointment was OK. He was concerned my haemoglobin levels had dipped at my last blood test (March) and had me do another one today. He mentioned the possibility of long term iron supplementation, dependent upon the results. I think they’ll be OK. In the words of David Lee Roth, I don’t feel anaemic.

He (the doctor, not David Lee Roth) is drawing a blank on the cause of the bleeding but suggested that if/when I next have active bleeding I could go to A+E and they might be able to do some kind of immediate test. He called it a ‘scan’, which sounds a lot less mechanically intrusive than jamming a camera down my throat.

I asked him about the SSRIs and he said it would likely be fine.

So I’ve decided to start taking them… tonight. On the way back from the appointment I was coming up with excuses why I shouldn’t, but the fact is that I’m not OK and I need to admit this. For the past couple of weeks I’ve felt dreadful. At the moment I feel light headed, spaced out, my stomach is very unhappy and I had so much nausea this morning when minor things at work stressed me. I feel like I’m actually physically ill when at work, and magically better over the weekends. I’m still worried about side effects, but let’s just rephrase that a moment – I am anxious about side effects. That comes with the territory, doesn’t it?

The hospital itself was a strange experience. Firstly, my mum met me from work and we went over there on the bus, but before getting on the bus I took her on a tour of the graffiti near my workplace. The graffiti is of the extremely talented street-art variety, not just random tags. That was fine. What wasn’t fine was running into Becky. I felt like… I’d left work for the day, I was with my mother, it was personal time. Why you are here, Becky? Your presence is intrusive to my personal life. That’s how I felt when I saw her face on my phone when it notified me she was looking at my social media. Why does it always have to be you? Why is it never James or any other random colleague? It’s always you.

So that was uncomfortable. We just ignored each other, because why would you say hello to someone when you can just stalk their LinkedIn profile instead.

And the hospital itself…

The last time I was at that particular hospital was December. I felt dreadful at the time. I was anaemic, work seemed to be imploding around me, and I had the other issue in the background. I felt absolutely awful that day, everything was getting too much, and the day after, I decided to kill myself (and suddenly felt a lot happier). Obviously, I didn’t do that, but this was how I felt during that period of my life. I remember after the appointment going through the car park feeling that life as I knew it just seemed to be drifting away from me. Wandering through the car park today was a bit of a surreal experience. I didn’t remember it until I was there.

Not a great Monday

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I went into work this morning feeling fine. It took about half an hour before my stomach had mysteriously become upset again, and 3 hours before I had to leave the office and take a walk just to get out of there.

I learnt today that there was a company social event over the weekend, which I knew nothing about. Who was in charge of organising that? Oh right… Becky. It’s just school-girl bullying. Exclude, isolate…

Perhaps unsurprisingly, HR lady didn’t speak to me after all. I don’t know how to interpret this. Doesn’t exactly make me feel included or non-isolated though.

If the gastroenterologist advises against taking SSRIs on Wednesday then I’m not really sure what’s going to happen. I don’t feel that I’m functioning very well at work at the moment and I don’t have a plan for changing that. Currently I think it is likely I will leave before I find another job.

So…

I don’t have a plan for changing anything but there are events that can change things and I’m holding on for these.

1. If gastro says the SSRIs should be OK then I’ll be starting them Wednesday evening most likely. Maybe they’ll help, maybe they won’t. I don’t know.

2. Otherwise, the only thing that could change anything is the last counselling session the company will pay for, which will happen next Tuesday. My counsellor will inform the company at which point they really really really should speak to me and let me know whether or not they intend to extend it.

Personally though I want to tail off the counselling. It was helpful when I was going through a lot, but I’m not sure anymore. I’m not learning to cope with things. I’m getting overwhelmed and switching into apathetic depression. I think I need CBT now, but the CBT waiting list is going to be 3-4 months on the NHS. I have a phone call about this tomorrow…

The problem is at the moment any HR meeting is going to go like this:

HR: “Hello eevee, how are-”
EV: “Why haven’t you spoken to me in the last six weeks?”
HR: “Er well-”
EV: “I asked you for a meeting six weeks ago. How do you think this makes me feel?”
HR: “Well, I, err-”
EV: “You know there’s a problem, you know I’ve been struggling. You should be checking up on me”
HR: “Well I’ve been quite busy”
EV: “OK, I’ll tell you how it makes me feel, it makes me feel that this company doesn’t care whether or not I keep coming to work”
HR: “Oh we do care, I promi-”
EV: “I shouldn’t have to be proactive here. That’s stress for me and it makes me feel that you’re not taking me seriously. It should you being proactive. Don’t you care what kind of environment you’re providing?”

And so on.

It’s Sunday evening again

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Tomorrow is Monday (obviously) which means HR lady will probably be in the office. She still hasn’t spoken to me about the ‘late-June’ meeting we were supposed to have, and it’s very much mid-July now. She has a reason to speak to me soon though, because the company is actually paying for my counselling at the moment.

The subject of counselling was raised when I complained about Becky, and I said I was already seeing someone. They offered me 12 sessions, on the condition that it was with a counsellor chosen by my boss, which I politely declined. The company came back and offered to pay for 5 sessions with my current counsellor, which they’d then ‘review’. I accepted, but I didn’t feel grateful because the whole thing irritated me. Asking me to break off my established and trusting relationship with my counsellor was extremely insensitive; asking me to see a counsellor chosen by my boss was clearly inappropriate, and knocking it down to 5 sessions after I declined this is just a bit… I don’t know… I was very underwhelmed.

Anyway I had number 4 last week and my counsellor has kept the company updated on this, so it would be appropriate for HR lady to speak to me this week.

I’ve lost faith in HR lady, so I don’t know what will happen. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if nothing at all happens, but I find it quite draining to be mentally prepared for this meeting all the time. My current feelings are that the situation has not improved much and I will leave because of it, as soon as I have something better lined up or maybe before. I don’t really know how much to say to HR. I think it’s right to make it clear I’m uncomfortable here, but I’ve done that before and it hasn’t yielded any improvement, so…

The other big thing this week is I have a gastro appointment. At the moment I feel that I can’t start taking SSRIs because they come with a warning about stomach bleeding, which of course I have experienced before. I need to discuss this with the gastroenterologist. I keep going hot and cold on whether or not I want to start taking them, but if there’s a significant risk of heavier or more frequent bleeds then they’re not worth it.

Mixed signals

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Well, I was planning to start my anti-depressants this weekend but today wasn’t such a bad day and I’ve decided to re-assess next week.

The main thing is that I have a voicemail from the recruiter who set me up with the two phone interviews asking me to phone him back as he has ‘good news’. This will have to wait until Monday morning now, but I expect it means I have at least one in-person interview available to me.

Work wasn’t so bad today. Becky was working from home as she had to ‘go out’ this morning (interview?!?!) and I felt a lot calmer. What a coincidence.

My watch agrees. Look at the stress graph for yesterday vs today:

Today

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Today was pretty awful. I woke up far too early feeling sick, which has lasted all day along with a very unhappy stomach. My overall digestive system is what I’d call a bit oversensitive at the best of times, but today has been ridiculous. I didn’t eat anything unusual yesterday; I’m pretty sure it’s just anxiety. I felt weird and spaced out at work. It’s a complete contrast to working from home yesterday, when I felt quite calm and content.

I thought maybe I was nervous about phoning up for various appointments so I got that out of the way this morning, but it didn’t help. I hoped I’d feel better for taking a bit more control of my life, but no.

I have a phone assessment appointment for the psychiatric service for Tuesday, and a hospital appointment (gastro) for Wednesday.

So it’ll be a busy week of medical appointments next week. I’m going to have to work from home Tuesday to take that call, and I’ll have to leave work early on Wednesday. So with Becky stalking my LinkedIn profile, she’s going to be convinced I’m having interviews.

The LinkedIn stalking thing was stressing me, so I logged into LinkedIn as soon as I got to work and blocked her. I thought that would make me feel better, but no.