Back to work

I'm back at work, and things seem to be going well. I think the big advantage of having time off from work ended up being space to get medical care. Apparently, my poor performance at work wasn't due just to stress. I was actually low on iron as well. I don't think I was anemic, but I was definitely close enough to be getting many symptoms - fatigue, dizziness, restless leg syndrome (which impacted sleep . . . which caused fatigue . . .), irritability, and depression. I am now taking 16 times the normal daily recommended iron in pill-form with vitamin C, and am doing much better.

Returning to work was a bit scary - but mostly because I wasn't sure I would be able to function better once I got back. In fact, the first day, last Friday, I didn't function well. I was almost falling asleep in meetings, exhausted by the time the day was over, and worried that I wasn't going to be healthy in time. Some dear friends were very nice to me when I stopped by after work, and I felt better in time to sleep well that night.

In retrospect, the issue was probably that I'd figured out I was supposed to be taking six pills of iron, and not just one a day, a mere two days or less ahead of time - and the iron simply hadn't built up yet. I was probably actually sicker than I was when I started leave (more on that later) when I started the supplements, near the end of leave. Over the weekend, I seem to have rebuilt up the critical amount of iron so I can function pretty well - I'm still getting tired and short dizzy spells in the evenings, but I'm enthused about work again.

So, why did I have iron deficiency? Often, this can be a sign of a much more serious issue - cancer, internal bleeding, and other yucky stuff. You will be happy to know that is probably NOT the case here. Most likely, I ran short because I donated blood, and apparently can't replenish my iron as quickly as many other people. I need to check with my doctor a bit more, and will badger him about further testing - but this explanation really fits the evidence. For example, things got a lot rougher after the move - and, looking back at email, I did donate blood about two or three weeks after the move. Before that, I remember getting despondent around December to January. I assumed that it was because covering for my teammates on vacation kept me from learning my own position and that was demoralizing, especially when the new person joined and I still didn't know what MY job was - but I actually also donated blood around late December, too.

And there's a big silver lining. DH and I are finally dealing with some major relationship issues that were unsurfaced by all of this. You know, the ones I've been blogging about? They weren't just products of my iron deficiency or bad mood, and they weren't my fault (although I certainly haven't been helping things get better lately, either).

So, looking at the results of being sick:
1) I came close to losing my job and lost some of my coworkers' confidence in me.
2) Our finances are really bad right now. We're scraping by for the next six weeks.
3) DH and I are finally working on a chronic problem in our relationship - in the past, the main person working on fixing things has been me. The chronic problem, of course, is that responsibility in our family hasn't been balanced appropriately. DH is finally taking on the main responsibility for working on this problem - and other responsibilities are shifting as well.
4) We got to see what happens when I can't function well, which clearly underscored the importance of #3. There really has been too much depending on me.
5) Following from #4, DH is seeing how important he is to our family from a new perspective: He is seeing how he can be strong when I am weak - and how critical it is that he volunteers to be strong. This next statement probably won't surprise anyone reading this blog - but dads / husbands matter! And not just as a paycheck or daily child care. Yet, I've been shocked by how many people are happy to give men a "pass" on participating fully beyond their basic 9-to-5 duties.
6) I now am healthy again, and have a better idea of what being healthy looks like. I think I might have been low on iron before and didn't recognize it, in retrospect. That probably won't happen again.
7) I am now better prepared to promote my expectations of my partner, and better able to trust in my ability to be reasonable. I spent a lot of time looking for outside confirmation that what I was asking from my husband was, in fact, reasonable. In retrospect, I know the answer: My expectations were not reasonable. I expected far too little, and the fact that DH was still struggling to meet those very low expectations was a symptom of a bigger issue and a sign that he needed some help from someone else.
8) I now know the value of considering the possibility that the other person is contributing to a problem as well, instead of assuming that if I do things differently or "get it right", I can make the problem will go away on my own. Recognizing other people's failings can be a good thing, if done with charity.
9) I got a month to spend with my family, with no parent working outside the home. "Some things, money can't buy." I'm saving my vacation time so we can do this again - have a long period of time, at home, just being together doing normal things.

A lengthy, wordy list (but hey, what did you expect from me?). The summary: Career and finances are in a bad position, but we're poised to make the most of it with flying colors. So things will probably continue to be annoying for a while longer as I repair my career and we get finances back on track. Then we'll probably regain our ground and have enough momentum to "get ahead", and then get enough wiggle room to make some changes and get a bit more "control" over our lives - although maybe "influence" is a better word; we never really get full control over anything in life. But we do get a lot of influence - if we keep our eyes open for it.