I'm going slightly mad

[seanxl1200c]

I'm going slightly mad by Queen. I heard that song tonight while watching random videos on YouTube tonight, while I should have been doing other things. That song kind of sums up my feelings.

Left for work today (I guess yesterday now) at 6 am and got to the jobsite at 8. stupid Chicago traffic, especially during rain. ended up not leaving till 9:15 pm ish, only taking a half hour for lunch at 1:30 pm (two hours after i normally eat) Got home at 10:30. yet the only thing i have managed to do productively since i got home is take a shower and wash all the dust off me. I still have a chain of custody to fill out for 106 samples I collected. This comes after having to write a report for a project that i did two yeas ago. took me 9 days to write and can only bill the client for one day, since that is what i said it would take. I basically didn't do my job correctly two years ago and now I'm paying for it. documentation isn't all there, and what is there is a mess. I was doing 4 hours dialysis 3 days a week and working around ten hours a day doing something i wasn't really trained very well for. oh, and i had to do 6 revisions of the report. The reviewer kept sending it back to me.   And I've been told i am having my authority to approve any invoice taken away from me, because of a screw up with an invoice i didn't realize was missing two years ago. Now the vendor (a subcontractor) is asking for payment and our client might not be able to pay because of how long ago the services occurred.

 I'm sure that my significant other will be upset that i didn't take the car in to get tires put on it.

She tries to be supportive but i really don't feel like she gets it. I really don't feel like anybody in my life does. I called in sick a couple of times in  the past couple weeks not because i was feeling any worse than I always do (and I always do feel bad) but because i just didn't feel like going. I'm now out of sick time until January 1.

And the dishes haven't been done yet. Fiance works out of town from Monday through Thursday, so dishes get done Wednesday night. lol No time to do them Thursday cause she gets back while I'm at dialysis.
I really feel like i need some time off to just get my head back on straight., but that's not very financially feasible.

After three years on dialysis working full time and trying to keep up with my (ab)normal home life, I am really at the end of my rope. Just looked at the clock. I have to be up in about an hour to get ready for work, so that i can be in early enough to get a full 8 hours in and leave early for dialysis.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to cope with this, I would welcome them. You would think after three years of this I'd have it down by now.

[looneytunes]

Sean...it sounds like you are on overload!  You are to be admired for the attempt to keep on living a "normal" life while trying to deal with dialysis.  So many patients are on disability because they can't do what you are doing.  I don't really have an suggestions for you, just a feeling of admiration. 

[Rerun]

My work had a program where other employees could donate leave to someone who was battling a disease.  Look into that. 

Your last resort is to go on disability.  You've paid into it and it is there for you.  You will feel so much better.  Then you will have time on your hands to work maybe part-time and they allow that.

I know you hate to do it, but you may have to.  I did.

[RightSide]

Sean,

Evidently what you have done is struggled to maintain a normal lifestyle, but at the expense of your emotional and psychological health.  That's important too.  In fact, that's important to your physical health too (see below).

Maybe you should think about whether the tradeoff is worth it.  Do you really want to end up on a cocktail of antidepressants and tranquilizers someday?  (Remember, without kidneys you don't want to take any potent meds that aren't absolutely necessary.)

I made the tradeoff the other way.  I decided that "going slightly mad" wasn't worth it.

And here's why:

• Patients with chronic kidney disease who have been diagnosed with depression are twice as likely to be hospitalized, progress to long-term dialysis treatments or die within a year as those who are not depressed, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.
  
  In the study, published in the May 19 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers monitored for one year 267 patients with chronic kidney disease – 56 of them with a diagnosis of a current major depressive episode, referred to here as depression, based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition (DSM-IV).
  
  Nearly 61 percent of patients with depression compared to 44 percent without depression either died, progressed to long-term dialysis, or were hospitalized within a year of observation; 55 percent of depressed patients were hospitalized compared to 40 percent of patients who were not depressed; 27 percent of depressed patients needed to start regular dialysis treatments compared to 11 percent without depression; and 9 percent of depressed individuals died compared to 6 percent without depression.
  
  http://tinyurl.com/2b7ph5l
  

When you're already battling a life-threatening illness, poor mental health can make it worse.

I decided early on that I would do everything to give my body a fighting chance to live as long as possible.  And as this study suggests, that means taking care of my mental health--avoiding getting stressed out by the 60 hour work weeks I used to pull as an engineer, steering around family conflicts, and exercising every day.

[totosidney]

I like what Rightside had to say. It is hard to argue with such sensible-logical stuff. But there is this other thing. I call it being a warrior. It is damn important to me. And maybe to you too? Your job would suck even without dialysis. But what the Hell: You have a job! So perhaps you can use the dialysis with the attached sympathy/horror to your advantage at work. Start talking about how awful dialysis is and how you will most likely die etc. Emphasize the fact that all your blood volume has to be removed 8 or 10 times through painful needles. Perhaps you can get a few concessions? A suggestion: Have your Doctor write you an exercise prescription. Tell them at work that there is no way that you will be able to comply with this critical necessity to go work out at the gym every day for 60 minutes; so too bad, poor me, I guess I’ll die. Maybe they will pop for at least letting you leave at 5?  Or maybe I am just being stupid? They may be total ass-holes.   In any case.. .. I just wanted to cheer you up a bit with some random thoughts. Hope it helped. Cheers, Sid  PS I used to get to Chicago a lot. I loved eating at Manny’s Deli on Clinton. Yummy matzo ball soup and corn beef on onion rolls and latkes. Ever eat there?

[sullidog]

I work part time and even that is too much, I'm on the verge of being let go anyways.
I know how you feel.

[kitkatz]

God help you. I mean it, sounds like some divine intervention might be needed.