There are always those individuals who constantly write about staying positive, having Epilepsy but not letting Epilepsy have you, living life to the fullest despite the disorder, and at least a dozen other super-smart sayings. When you look at their profiles however you see that they have very light cases of Epilepsy and that their seizures are under control through medication- and that they don't even have to take much medication either.
I logged on to the site yesterday for the first time in many, many months and re-discovered something interesting. Those anxiety attacks that I so often write about are a normal part of pretty much all epileptic's lives, excepting those light cases that is. What's more, it makes no difference whatsoever which medication they take. It's the same with bouts of depression. A great many of them take anti-depressants or tranquilizers for those conditions. Some even have a fast-acting rescue tranquilizer against anxiety attacks with them at all times in case they have one while underway! It seems like very few of them even attempt to try and cope with those things by any other means, like reflection and self-control, or prayer and trying to depend on God.
Many complain that they are surrounded by people who don't understand what they're going through, who think they're just being big babies. The people saying that can't understand how it is to have this thing draining you every waking moment of every day of your life, making everything you do much, much more difficult and strenuous. They often hear, "Just stop acting like a baby and feeling sorry for yourself!"
Reading about them makes me "feel a little better" because it shows me that I'm not the only one, that I'm not especially weak in some way for having these anxiety attacks or these bouts of depression, but that they go with the territory.
Conny brought up the subject of my career again yesterday, being concerned as she is about how my condition seems to be progressively worsening over time. She'd really like to see me reduce my work hours, like maybe going down to working four instead of five days per week, dropping Fridays, for example, which are only six hours anyway.
Everything in me screams, "NO!!!" when I even think about reducing work hours, or changing anything at all as pertains to my job. I have an absolute dream job! My job fits my talents perfectly and I'm convinced it was given to me by God himself, and the work itself is as much fun as anything can be when you're doing it all messed up by Epilepsy. My employer holds me in very high esteem and gives me absolute freedom with the project he has assigned me to. I work almost totally unsupervised and can do much to schedule everything to best fit my condition.
I don't know if the director of the company- the big boss- even knows that I've got Epilepsy. My team leader knows, but I've never had occasion to tell the big boss- I hardly ever see him. If I wanted to reduce my hours I'd have to talk to him about it, and the thought scares me to death! I have no idea what would happen to my career if I did. The last thing I want to do is to arouse the impression that I'm having trouble doing my job (even if it is the truth).
That talk with Conny gave me one idea though: I normally try and reserve Fridays for office work- no outside appointments or appointments with clients. So maybe I could talk to the boss about working from home on Fridays? At least that wouldn't be asking to work less, and it wouldn't mean earning less either.
It's a good thing that I have Conny because I'd probably give up and go on disability or something right now if I didn't! Both of my daughters are grown up and don't need me anymore, so providing for Conny is what keeps me working full-time and being so adamant about protecting my job, to maintain the standard of living that she's accustomed to. I myself could be happy with very little. For her I want to keep working as much as I can for as long as I can.
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