Welcome Back

Now it was time to jump back into some sense of normalcy after being on short-term disability for my brain surgeries. In my mind, I was just going to go back into my routine and pick up where I left off. Reality soon kicked me in the face and I found out it wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. For one thing, it was a struggle to get my brain to remind me of how to do my job. It was the strangest thing to be sitting at my desk and just stare at the computer and stacks of paperwork and literally have my mind go blank. It wasn’t only mentally that it was tough but physically too. My eyesight was limited due to now being partially blind as a result of my optic nerves being moved during one of the surgeries. I was diagnosed with Traumatic Optic Nerve Neuropathy. I lost my peripheral vision and part of my central vision. My field of vision is along the bridge of my nose so it’s almost like I have one eye right in the middle. So that was a bit challenging to get used to and the light bothered my vision too so the lights above my workstation were taken out. I often had to wear sunglasses inside just because the lights were too bright indoors. I was grateful that my supervisors made adjustments to not only my workstation but also my computer monitors. They did everything they could to make me comfortable.

It didn’t take me long to find out that one of my coworkers who filled in for me while I was gone was bitter towards me because I was out for the amount of time I was and left her with all the work. She took no mercy on me when I came back and became increasingly more agitated and frustrated with me when my work performance wasn’t as she expected. She wasn’t the only one surprised because I was getting frustrated with myself. Needless to say, I was constantly dealing with the condescending remarks, conversations she would have with other coworkers about how incompetent I was, and the repeated reports she would make to the supervisors regarding my mistakes. Every single day for what seemed like months I would go home upset and stressed because of the hostile work environment. I couldn’t believe this was going on especially when I would get called into the “principal’s” office to explain myself. It’s not like they couldn’t see what was happening and what the motive was for her behavior, but it was a waste of time and drained me of all my confidence and energy. I always took pride in my work so I take offense when someone challenges me in that way when I know I hadn’t gone anything wrong. I owned up to my mistakes and took responsibility for my actions, but when someone challenges my work ethic and starts making up things, I take offense to that type of behavior.

I began to change my focus and was determined I wasn’t going to let this negativity get me down. I figured I would just continue to do my job the best way I knew how and not waste my time or energy on what she was doing and I would let karma take care of the rest. After the dust settled, I continued to work like a machine. It was more of a love-hate relationship. I loved my job but hated what it did to me mentally and physically. I could not turn it off at times and that was troublesome because I would still work when I was off and at times I would work on-call to assist with Spanish translations. Most importantly, I was also trying to please the person closest to me because it was like he could not handle me being sick or appearing weak. It felt like he would look down on me if I was laying down more than usual and made me feel guilty. I guess he was thinking the same thing I was that once the brain tumor was gone, everything would go back to the way it was before. Boy, were we both wrong! With my disease, I constantly battled chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, dizziness, and headaches. I am steroid dependent, so I need to take a certain dosage of oral steroids every 4 hours just to function. Everyone is different but at the time, I was taking anywhere between 50mg to 65mg of Hydrocortisone which is on the high side. This was the only way I could survive working full-time and functioning day to day. On the weekends, I was on death’s door trying to recover from the week only to repeat it again the following week. My life was constantly on a hamster wheel, and I did not know how to get off it or if I was going to die in it.

Call it being naïve, uneducated about my disease, careless, etc. I did not know there were resources available like support groups that I could reach out to. This is one of my regrets looking back at not educating myself enough about my disease at that time. The fact that my own Physicians did not know enough about my disease did not help either. I continued to work hard and constantly tried to prove to myself that I could keep working at that pace, but little did I know work was slowly killing me and causing additional medical issues. I was also trying to keep my relationship together. This was recipe for disaster that was about to unfold in ways I could not have imagined.