Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans - John Lennon
I used to have an extremely busy life. I worked hard, I loved hard and I played hard. I worked every waking hour of every weekday (and those days were long) and at the weekends I burned the candle at both ends squeezing in all the fun I thought I was missing out on. I had just reached that sweet-spot in my career when people waited for me to give my opinion before making decisions. I felt like I had finally made it - I was important in my field. I had something worthwhile to say! And then one day in April 2018 my wonderful, stressful, exciting life all came to a screeching halt......
Nothing dramatic happened - no major life trauma. I just woke up one morning with 'flu. I was prone to getting colds. In fact I'd already spent a week in November toughing it out working remotely from my sick bed. I had dutifully phoned into the office and croaked out my plans as best I could. My week in bed did me some good but I couldn't shake the 'flu symptoms and the virus lingered on for weeks on end. I was dog tired all of the time (falling asleep in meetings), I ran low-grade fevers every night, and everything ached. Between January and March I pushed my self through the delivery of a really big piece of project work and on the day we completed it I was struck down with 'flu once again.
I was getting ready to collapse into my hotel bed, really pleased with myself for handing in the project. I just had my teeth to clean and then I could finally give in to the virus. And that's when I glanced it in the mirror.....a bright scarlet rash plastered across my nose and both cheeks. Why nobody in the office had thought to comment on it was beyond me. It looked awful! So I did what any other middle-aged woman would do; I took a selfie and sent it to my husband, "Look how sick I look...LOL"! The next morning I dragged myself onto a train and somehow managed to get my sorry ass back home.
And that was the last full day of work that I have done in over a year.
As it turns out, I didn't have 'flu at all. Instead, my body had finally succumbed to a raft of autoimmune conditions that I didn't know I had and which effectively put an end to life as I knew it.
I stepped through the autoimmune looking-glass and have desperately been trying to find my way back ever since.
Nothing dramatic happened - no major life trauma. I just woke up one morning with 'flu. I was prone to getting colds. In fact I'd already spent a week in November toughing it out working remotely from my sick bed. I had dutifully phoned into the office and croaked out my plans as best I could. My week in bed did me some good but I couldn't shake the 'flu symptoms and the virus lingered on for weeks on end. I was dog tired all of the time (falling asleep in meetings), I ran low-grade fevers every night, and everything ached. Between January and March I pushed my self through the delivery of a really big piece of project work and on the day we completed it I was struck down with 'flu once again.
I was getting ready to collapse into my hotel bed, really pleased with myself for handing in the project. I just had my teeth to clean and then I could finally give in to the virus. And that's when I glanced it in the mirror.....a bright scarlet rash plastered across my nose and both cheeks. Why nobody in the office had thought to comment on it was beyond me. It looked awful! So I did what any other middle-aged woman would do; I took a selfie and sent it to my husband, "Look how sick I look...LOL"! The next morning I dragged myself onto a train and somehow managed to get my sorry ass back home.
And that was the last full day of work that I have done in over a year.
As it turns out, I didn't have 'flu at all. Instead, my body had finally succumbed to a raft of autoimmune conditions that I didn't know I had and which effectively put an end to life as I knew it.
I stepped through the autoimmune looking-glass and have desperately been trying to find my way back ever since.
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