Living Without HepC

Throughout March I seemed to spend all my time sitting about and waiting for recovery. The posts on my blog reflect this kind of vacuous state – nothing active. And the posts I didn’t publish are even drearier – moaning about lists of symptoms and everything remaining the same. I recall feeling I just couldn’t get anything together much – make anything happen. All thinking and wishing and no doing.

By the beginning of May it has all changed. This morning, I am grabbing a few minutes on the computer before I set off down the shops for a bit of last-minute shopping as I am off on a train journey this afternoon to a new world of work.

Tomorrow I am starting a ten month assignment working five days a week – my first full time work in 3 years. (I am starting off with 4 days week for 3 weeks to ease myself in.) And it’s not local – it’s in a city 250 miles away. I will need to lease a flat short term as I can’t face the prospect of living in hotels that long. It’s a troubleshooting interim management role in an ailing organisation. I was approached to be part of a small team ‘dropped into’ the organisation to improve performance change culture, etc. Because it has been necessary over the past few months to spend more money than I was earning, the offer came at a good time - and is not one I could really afford to turn down.

So, having sat about a few weeks ago wishing for a change in my life I’ve now got massive change.

I’ve resigned from my job as a telephone counsellor and case manager. Leaving was very sad – I really enjoyed the benefit of supportive colleagues there whom I will miss. I also finished up my work with several counselling clients at the young people’s counselling agency I have been working with.

I’ve also been busy with the media conference I wrote about, another meeting at the BBC about a radio play based on this blog and several others (I will write more about that soon), dealing with some difficulties on the Forum, getting quotes for a new central heating boiler as ours is on its last legs, cranking up my laptop to take away and a myriad of other things to prepare.

I feel like I am now just about in the real world again – sleeping seven hours a night (not 9 or 10 as before), getting up earlier in the morning and busy on the go with things to do all through the day.

I feel I have made a psychological shift away from being an ill person. Now I’m ready to test myself with the demands of a busy work life again. Today I can feel some trepidation about coping and surviving it. Tomorrow I shall face the reality!

Oh, and I kicked the cigarette habit too – seven weeks ago tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.