Am Back

[soupdragon69]

Hi Guys,

Sorry I havent been around since before Xmas. Hope you all had a great one and good new year too!

Have had alot going on of late amongst which I managed to throw a glass of water over my laptop one morn pre work and came back that evening to find it would do nowt - funny that!

Anyway, new laptop a couple of days later and gradually getting it set up again.

My infliximab/Remicade has been moved to 6wkly due to ongoing probs but missed my second one at this new regime due to a really nasty sinusitis which lasted 3.5wks and still have hearing probs and remnants from it now. Finally got my infusion and they are now thinking my crohns may have moved to my stomach groan.. and am laid low again this week with bad stomach pain and running to the loo 14 times a day again...

Asthma is behaving fantasically well to the extent we are winding back on some of my many meds which they are also thinking are contributing to my gut pain with side effects - great eh?

Skin is improving too with the 6wkly infliximab. So it definately has its pluses.

Work have been ongoingly nasty to me to the extent I will now be going back into clinical practice as my old boss has offered me a job and wants to look after me unlike my current boss who only wants to beat me over the head day in day out with rules and regs. I have managed to stay at work since my return last Oct without one day off sick but at what cost to me? If I continue pushing myself more I will end up in hospital again and had visions of it this past week so here I am resting and behaving...

My derms thinks I now need to go salycilate, benzoic acid and azo dye free in my diet and meds etc the first is bad enough and the second nigh on impossible never mind the third one! The reason she is thinking this is because GP, asthma and derms all think I am aspirin sensitive asthmatic with the pentasa triggering my asthma before. She thinks that these all may be impacting on my gut and skin too. I saw the gastro nurse last week and explained all this to her and she agreed! arrggghhh! Turns out the gastro team put folk on these exclusions when patients have stomach, oesophageal or oral crohns!

Anyway, will go for now. Just wanted to stick my head in and say "hi" to all the folk that know me and "welcome" to those that dont yet!

Hope you are all well. I have missed you all!

 

[Kev]

Hey soup... Nice to see you back. Wow. New Year got off to a rocky start for you. Hope things turn around. Work and this disease can be a real juggling act. Even if one manages to keep all the balls in the air, there is often a price to be paid, and it is commonly us who have to pay it. I've been contemplating another career, I've been able to manage the physical demands of working as a private investigator.. but there's a negative emotional aspect to it that I just didn't factor in.. Started seeing the negative when I realized that I was looking for the worst in people... hazard of the profession, I guess. A bit of burn-out. I think a negative outlook flavours all aspects of one's life, so I decided to see if there was something else that would pay the bills, fit in with IBD. Working on it now.. Anyway, enuff about me. Before I go, just remember.. you water plants, not computers... Take care, chin up, keep in touch, and belated seasons bests.

 

[soupdragon69]

ha ha ha ha Kev, is that were I went wrong with the watering? I was trying to figure it out. What would I do without you!

Am glad you have figured out the impact things were having on you. Will be interested to hear what the new venture is..

 

[D Bergy]

Glad to see you again.

I guess you are doing better than the old laptop. I was wondering how you were doing lately. Sounds like you have had a rough time. When I was really sick it was all I could do to survive work. I just had no energy and wanted to sleep. It has got to be real rough for you.

I am glad you have the opportunity to work for someone a little more compassionate.

Dan

 

[Sojourn]

Good to hear from you. It was probably time for a new computer anyway. At least Vista has been out for a year now, so you shouldn't run into as many problems as when it first came out. Or did you get a Mac?

I spilled a cup of tea into my last laptop, but I turned it upside down opened up, and put a lamp underneath as heat source to dry it. It came back on and worked fine for the next two months and then died.

Anyway, good to hear this disease hasn't gotten the best of you. I'm surprised you've only had one sick day going to the loo 14 times a day. That would completely drain me. I'm down to about 4-5 bad days, 2-3 good days.

 

[soupdragon69]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your kind thoughts. That is exactly why I just havent been around - I have been so drained its been all I could do to get into work each day. Could feel myself sliding and very frustrated that no matter what I tried it continued.

I am looking forward to going back to my old job - it will mean 12hr days again but only 3 a week and I will be able to get 2wks hols out of 1wks leave by requesting on my duty worked. My old boss has already agreed to my not doing nights, to no more than 2 shifts in a row and said to me "we both know when you are feeling ok you will want to some overtime occasionally, how about we sit down and discuss a ceiling on the number of hours you do in say a fortnight?" She also told me if I was getting tired to let her know and we could look at my shift pattern to see what else could be done.

The other thing is alot of colleagues have come up to me recently (I was asked to go back clinically 4wks ago for 3wks in total to help out as they were down skilled staff but am back in the office now til the end of next week) and said how good it was to see me, that I was back where I belonged, that I should never have left, when was I coming back for good? It did my morale no end of good and my old boss wanted me to use the time to see how I managed physically and to be sure its what I wanted again.

It is good I have a light at the end of the tunnel and my Occ Health Cons thinks the stress of my current job and the demands my current boss is putting on me especially since last Autumn have compounded the problem with my new flare...

Am just trying to hold things together til I get settled back in my old job.

 

[soupdragon69]

Hi Sojourn,

That was my feeling/excuse about a new comp - needed an update lol I did end up with Vista and apparently they are releasing a Service Pack 1 next month. We will see eh? Remember them doing it with the previous system.

The only reason I have managed no time off work is because things were going reasonably well in that I could cope until beginning Dec. Then they started to slide more. Also you will see I did 3 wks clinical until week before last in my post to Dan and my current boss sent me a letter at the time to say if I ended up off sick at the end of the clinical shifts they "may" take me down the formal route on the capability procedure they are using to "manage my conditions". I took it to the union and they said my boss can do that and it wasnt they "might" it meant "they would".

I finally got minutes from a meeting in December I had with my boss and an HR manager last monday. At the time the HR manager told me in front of my boss that she "wasnt saying I couldnt have sick leave, just wanted to see less of it". Conveniently for them they didnt put that in the minutes so were able to threaten me with the bit above. And the bit above was in a letter to me VERY fast whereas the minutes from the Dec meeting took my boss til FEBRUARY to type up. See how they move the goalposts constantly?

I wrote to them both and have asked for the minutes to be amended to reflect these comments. Funnily enough they havent come back to me yet but I am so angry at the mo I wont let it go because THEY KNOW I have them on this and they cant back track!

Obviously the ongoing stress isnt doing me any favours and my current boss keeps ramming down my throat that my going back to my old job isnt a "done deal". What she doesnt know is my old boss came to me and told me not to worry about things and she would help me sort things out. You will see what she said to me in my comments to Dan above. So it is actually a "done deal" but I have no intention of telling my current boss that. My old boss with do an "interview" with me but it will be an informal chat more than anything to sort out my pay scale etc.

All I want at the minute is for the strain to ease and for the pain and running to the loo to ease too!! Mostly I have been going to the loo up to 8 times a day but last friday was 14 times and have been in double figures this weekend. I HAVE to go into work this coming week because I am the only one without kids and the rest of the team are off work as their kids have a school holiday. The others in the team that dont have kids are also at work but I will be the most senior all 5 days and if nothing else the week will give me a chance to clear out my files etc ready for leaving and to do it in peace as I share the office with my boss and another manager.

Will mail the gastro nurse monday if things are still bad and yes yet another trip to my GP on monday too. Lord there are days I hate this game we play!!

 

[Kev]

Hey Soup... Just keep your eye on the prize... the light at the end of the tunnel. do whatever it takes to get you thru this interval. As for the ongoing battle, with the 'subjective' minute taking, I'm not sure what the laws are in the UK.. but here, a person who is present in a meeting with other people can legally, secretly tape that meeting (audio recording)... without their knowledge or consent. One never knows when a verbatim accounting of who said what 'exactly' might come in handy.. The only caution is to use a linear tape, not one of those digital 'chip' recorders.. A simple, micro cassette recorder typically usd for memos, etc.., available (even tho considered old technology) is best as it can be analyzed to prove it wasn't altered/edited. digital formats can be w/o it being detectable.. Hence why we continue to use the old format in the PI biz.. They will stand up to such scrutiny, and are admissable (sp?) in a court of law.

Course, that might be a bit of overkill in your case, perhaps the strain of going that far might be worse than being at the misery of their selective 'memories'. Or the laws may be different there regarding expectations of privacy. But, if you get to a point where these episodes of meetings with altered minutes really is getting you down.. you might want to pursue this, even if not 'legit' there, as a case of 'I didn't know I shouldn't do it, but I didn't know what else to do to get them to actually report honestly what was being said to me in these meetings'

Who would have 'thunk' that getting ill might cause one to even remotely ever consider resorting to such extremes; esp. in the field of 'compassionate care'. I guess the compassion only extends to the patients, and never to their 'staff'.

 

[Sojourn]

Yeah, that does sound complicated. I'm not sure what the laws in the U.S. are regarding company meetings but it's illegal in other circumstances to tape people unawares.

Hopefully, the situation with your old boss will be less stressful.

Service Pack 1 for Vista is supposed to be released next month. It's mostly a rollup of all the patches that have come out since it's release. I've had Vista for a year now and had a lot of problems in the beginning with compatibility issues. It's also slower starting up. A lot of people have gone back to XP but I didn't resort to that.