Bad Day
Yesterday my career started a death spiral. "Death Spiral" was Dr. Riddle's words; he likes aviation metaphors since he used to be an Air Force doctor. And technically, the death spiral will happen only if I do not become healthy in two months.
I have had a fatigue illness that started about nine years ago. Several doctors have been unable to diagnosis it. A diagnosis of hypopituitarism, underperformance of the pituitary gland, seemed close, but it turned out my hormones were fine. The oddities in my blood chemistry blotched up the usual hormone tests. My fatigue is not as bad a chronic fatigue syndrome. I work at half speed or quarter speed, I exhaust easily, I take a long time to recover my strength after illness, and I have constant muscle pain that fortunately I can mentally block without much effort. I also need 10 hours of sleep a day, but I needed that before I became fatigued.
Sometimes the fatigue goes into remission, during which I had 80% of my pre-fatigue endurance. My illness started October 1996, and a niacin treatment sent it into remission in September 1997. It re-emerged in February 1999, the niacin treatment failed, but it mysteriously went into remission again in May 2000. It flared up again sometime in 2001, but I pulled the trick of devoting my immune system 100% to it (leaving me defenseless against all other diseases) in December 2002 and forced it into remission for the next four months. That was the last time it was in remission. I have had full fatigue for the last two years and eight months.
Plus this last bout had additional symptoms, such as a mental fog that I had to work around to do higher mathematics. Then, when Christ the Servant Lutheran Church disbanded in October 2003, I developed depression. I think depression had been a symptom all along, but I had held it back by force of will. It took a depressing event in my life to let it overcome me. My work at my job ground to a complete halt.
I got involved at a new church, Peace Lutheran, and started forcing my depression away. I also started seeing a psychologist at work, but that did not seem to help much. Fortunately, my physician, Dr. Milles, figured out that I had sleep apnea on top of the fatigue (becoming fatter in the last few years had narrowed my nasal airways). I started using a CPAP machine in May 2004. After a few months the mental fog cleared up.
So lately I have enjoyed the relative good health of being afflicted with only my fatigue illness. The management at my job had been patient with me, accommodating me with a light workload. However, they have been honestly evaluating me in the annual reports as "Does not meet expectations." That is bureaucratese for "incompetent." Two incompetent ratings in a row mean that the personnel department has become involved and I might be fired for not doing my job.
My supervisor and his boss anticipated this, so for the last month I have been working with Ms. Roesner from the personnel office and with Dr. Riddle at the OHESS (Occupational Health, Environment, and Safety Services) to document my illness. My management figured that if they could officially document my health problems, then they could officially lower their expectations for me and give me better ratings. Or I could be transferred into a job I can handle or be dropped down to part-time status. (Part-time status would be bad, since my pay would be cut.)
Yesterday I had an appointment with my physician Dr. Milles and persuaded him to stop playing phone tag with Dr. Riddle and talk to him. Yesterday afternoon I had a meeting with Dr. Riddle. He had a few ideas for improving my health: adjusting my CPAP machine to an optimal setting for me instead of the factory setting and getting me on anti-depressant drugs to clear up any remaining depression. After we try that (which will take a few weeks to set up), we wait four weeks to see if my health clears up. If not, he sees no hope for my career. And he seems more optimistic than the irritating Ms. Roesner, who I suspect sees me as deadwood to be discarded.
Reporting this back to my management, they are hopeful about restoring my health. They really don't like me working at quarter speed. Our office is overtasked at the moment and being able to dump a normal workload on me would lessen that problem.
I got to see my annual evaluation for 2005, too. I was rated "Does not meet expectations," which I expected. But I was also rated incompetent in some individual tasks that I thought I had accomplished reasonably well. This was depressing.
After work, I joined Amy in a D&D game at The Family Game Story at Savage Mill. Last week, her brand-new first-level party of three characters had lost their battle against four orcs. The DM had given them a teaser that this week they would wake up in a stewpot. Amy persuaded me to roll up a character and rescue them. You can see her account of that at her livejournal frostmuffin.
Erin Schram
I have had a fatigue illness that started about nine years ago. Several doctors have been unable to diagnosis it. A diagnosis of hypopituitarism, underperformance of the pituitary gland, seemed close, but it turned out my hormones were fine. The oddities in my blood chemistry blotched up the usual hormone tests. My fatigue is not as bad a chronic fatigue syndrome. I work at half speed or quarter speed, I exhaust easily, I take a long time to recover my strength after illness, and I have constant muscle pain that fortunately I can mentally block without much effort. I also need 10 hours of sleep a day, but I needed that before I became fatigued.
Sometimes the fatigue goes into remission, during which I had 80% of my pre-fatigue endurance. My illness started October 1996, and a niacin treatment sent it into remission in September 1997. It re-emerged in February 1999, the niacin treatment failed, but it mysteriously went into remission again in May 2000. It flared up again sometime in 2001, but I pulled the trick of devoting my immune system 100% to it (leaving me defenseless against all other diseases) in December 2002 and forced it into remission for the next four months. That was the last time it was in remission. I have had full fatigue for the last two years and eight months.
Plus this last bout had additional symptoms, such as a mental fog that I had to work around to do higher mathematics. Then, when Christ the Servant Lutheran Church disbanded in October 2003, I developed depression. I think depression had been a symptom all along, but I had held it back by force of will. It took a depressing event in my life to let it overcome me. My work at my job ground to a complete halt.
I got involved at a new church, Peace Lutheran, and started forcing my depression away. I also started seeing a psychologist at work, but that did not seem to help much. Fortunately, my physician, Dr. Milles, figured out that I had sleep apnea on top of the fatigue (becoming fatter in the last few years had narrowed my nasal airways). I started using a CPAP machine in May 2004. After a few months the mental fog cleared up.
So lately I have enjoyed the relative good health of being afflicted with only my fatigue illness. The management at my job had been patient with me, accommodating me with a light workload. However, they have been honestly evaluating me in the annual reports as "Does not meet expectations." That is bureaucratese for "incompetent." Two incompetent ratings in a row mean that the personnel department has become involved and I might be fired for not doing my job.
My supervisor and his boss anticipated this, so for the last month I have been working with Ms. Roesner from the personnel office and with Dr. Riddle at the OHESS (Occupational Health, Environment, and Safety Services) to document my illness. My management figured that if they could officially document my health problems, then they could officially lower their expectations for me and give me better ratings. Or I could be transferred into a job I can handle or be dropped down to part-time status. (Part-time status would be bad, since my pay would be cut.)
Yesterday I had an appointment with my physician Dr. Milles and persuaded him to stop playing phone tag with Dr. Riddle and talk to him. Yesterday afternoon I had a meeting with Dr. Riddle. He had a few ideas for improving my health: adjusting my CPAP machine to an optimal setting for me instead of the factory setting and getting me on anti-depressant drugs to clear up any remaining depression. After we try that (which will take a few weeks to set up), we wait four weeks to see if my health clears up. If not, he sees no hope for my career. And he seems more optimistic than the irritating Ms. Roesner, who I suspect sees me as deadwood to be discarded.
Reporting this back to my management, they are hopeful about restoring my health. They really don't like me working at quarter speed. Our office is overtasked at the moment and being able to dump a normal workload on me would lessen that problem.
I got to see my annual evaluation for 2005, too. I was rated "Does not meet expectations," which I expected. But I was also rated incompetent in some individual tasks that I thought I had accomplished reasonably well. This was depressing.
After work, I joined Amy in a D&D game at The Family Game Story at Savage Mill. Last week, her brand-new first-level party of three characters had lost their battle against four orcs. The DM had given them a teaser that this week they would wake up in a stewpot. Amy persuaded me to roll up a character and rescue them. You can see her account of that at her livejournal frostmuffin.
Erin Schram