Deserving Wellness

Do you also have a difficult time advocating for yourself?

            I started a new job on my birthday last year at a place once so mysterious to me, because it seemed only fancy people with lots of money could afford to buy a membership and shop there. A kid from a trailer park certainly would never be able to afford such luxuries. I applied to work there at 18 years old, without luck. Looking back, I would not have had the work ethic or social skills I do now to succeed there. Maybe it was lucky after all, because I truly appreciate what it means to work for this place now, 18 years later. 

            I also appreciate and understand my brain and body more than when I was 18. And I try to treat it as best I can. This is why I am struggling, now that I am finally working a job that I find fulfilling and that demands enough from me to stay interested and challenged. 

            For the past four months, it has been physically demanding to the point that I thoroughly enjoy my work duties. I go home feeling accomplished and the right amount of tired. I have felt the happiest that I ever remember as an adult. I have purpose. The work I do helps people in the simplest of ways—feeding themselves and their families with minimal effort on their part. 

            While working this new, physically demanding job, I have also been taking care of my body by seeing many doctors and attempting to correct issues that I have lived with for far too long (most of my life). I have begun to treat the chronic illness that I knew I had, but didn’t have a diagnosis for it, or doctors to treat it, or health insurance to pay for it. In two days, I will be put under anesthesia for the third time in three months to dilate my esophagus again so that I can swallow food and eat like a regular human should be able to. 

            I have also received steroid injections in my wrists so that my Carpal Tunnel Syndrome did not continue to interfere with accomplishing my tasks at work. Also, so that the tasks would not cause further neurological damage to my hands.

            Because I have reached this contented place in my life, with a healthy balance between work and rest, I have been able to slowly begin incorporating creativity back into my life. It’s easier to create time for what I love to do: drawing, painting, reading, and writing. 

           I have cried at my new job twice. The first time was on a Saturday, the busiest day, a few days after I started taking a new medication for Ulcerative Colitis. It is an anti-inflammatory drug, specifically designed to alleviate inflammation in the lower gastro-intestinal tract. A few days after I began taking it, my bowels cramped so badly that I was bent over, crying into my single-use mask, as I tried to scoop chili into plastic containers. One of my coworkers could see how uncomfortable I was and spoke to me sympathetically, something I am not used to and am grateful for. She urged me to go home and take care of myself. My supervisor was also understanding and asked if I wanted to go sit down in the break room to see if it might help. 

           I have learned that taking care of myself is the most important thing I can do. No one is going to do it for me, and the world will not crumble while I heal. I took the break for fifteen minutes and drank water and went to the bathroom to see if it would help—or even if I could. It seemed that I was starting to feel better, so I returned to my station and began scooping chili once again. And the pain slowly returned. I finished the chili and attempted to portion out shrimp into their containers, but I was failing at holding back tears and my supervisor repeated that I could go home, I clearly needed to. I apologized and took my leave just shy of two hours before I was scheduled to. I went home and slept on the couch for three solid hours. 

           I’m excited to say that my body has adapted very well to the medication and the cramping pain has not happened again. 

            The second time I cried at work was also on a Saturday. It was the fourth day in the second full week that I worked in a new position—one that every other employee I have talked with agrees is the most physically demanding in the store. The position entails skewering 6-pound raw chickens, four birds per 5-pound skewer, eight skewers per oven. Truthfully, going into the training, I was scared of being burned by the ovens, skewers, and hot chicken grease. I was vocal about it, because that’s how I work through coping with difficult tasks. The work itself is not as bad as I thought it would be. It’s gross, sure, but that’s not what brought me to tears. 

            It was the fourth day of using muscles I have not used since I weight-lifted seven years ago. Even then, I did not lift this much with my shoulders, especially above my head. Lifting 30 pounds eight times onto a shoulder-to-knee height rack and then again from the rack into the oven, over my head, is putting far too much strain on my muscles. The job is not just doing that once per day, it’s doing that every 20-40 minutes, depending on the demand. Plus, the lifting and moving 60-pound boxes of raw chickens, and the squatting to load the cooked chickens into the hot plated display, the physical aspects of this position add up quickly. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, “your body will get used to it,” I would be able to afford a 2-hour deep tissue massage, with tip. Because I have weight-lifted, I know proper forms and breathing techniques. And I know my body very well. It will not "get used to" this pain by straining and over-working every muscle required for the job.

            I cried because I was struggling to do the job. I was physically fatigued beyond my limit. My muscles were tight, aching, and enflamed. I escaped to the refrigerated room that holds our food supplies to try cooling my body down. 

            I cried because I am finally in a job that I love and am proud to do, and I cannot do part of it. I have been told that the chicken position is where new employees have to prove themselves; they have to do that job for however long it takes to get the next new person to do it. I cried because I am worried that if I cannot do it, or cannot do it enough times per week, that I will lose this job that helped me get to this happy point in my life. 

            I cried because it feels like this is the shoe that was waiting to be dropped. 

            I cried because of the physical pain. 

            I cried because my mental health takes a toll when I am this exhausted, and I don’t want to return to the depression yet, again. I nearly asked Mike to lock up his gun again because I am afraid of my exhausted brain and what it might do to itself. I didn’t ask him, because I have learned new coping skills that worked. And I have a wedding to plan. 

            To those without mental health issues, that paragraph must seem totally fucking insane. To those with, keep fighting the good fight. You are worth it. You deserve to feel well.

            At the end of my shift on Saturday, my supervisor and I sat down with one of the assistant store managers, in lieu of our manager due to his vacation. I explained as best I could at the time that my body was too worn out and that I was in too much pain to do this new position five times a week. I expressed that the training schedule was too much for me to physically handle, and that it should have been the same as what I was told my eventual schedule would be—three days per week in the chicken room. Knowing I would be unable to physically handle the chicken room again on Sunday (the third day in a row), I asked that I be allowed to work the position I had been in previously. They allowed me to do so, and I thanked them.

            After leaving work, I poured two cups of Epsom salt into my bathtub and soaked for a full hour. Mike and I were two hours late to his nephew’s birthday party because of it. I even took ibuprofen, which is on my forbidden medication list. I slept almost immediately after hitting the sheets that night. 

            Working the other position yesterday was more tiring and difficult than usual due to my body being strained all week. It was clear that I was physically exhausted. I hardly spoke to anyone, and I was irritable, which is not my usual self at this job. And today, my weekly fun day of bowling on a league, I am resting at home instead. 

            I worry now that I might not even be able to handle three days per week in the chicken room. But I will try. And I will ask that they be separated by a rest day, either off work or in the less physically demanding position. I worry that they will refuse to accommodate, but I am trying to be hopeful.

            I am afraid to advocate for myself when it comes to the moment that I have to actually speak. I will probably cry because it is so difficult for me to do this. But I have to, for my health. I deserve to feel well.