Category Archives: Work and Studying

Mar 13 2013
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Work and Studying

Getting Away With It

How depressing – new research from the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University found that employees with disabilities are twice as likely to be attacked at work and experience higher rates of insults, ridicule and intimidation.

Sadly, I am not surprised, given my own experience (read more here).

The research shows 12.3% of people with disabilities or a long-term illness were humiliated, gossiped about and ignored, compared to 7.4% of people without disabilities.

Similarly, 10.5% of disabled people had been attacked at work, compared to 4.5% of non-disabled people.

Any bullying at work is unacceptable, but the bullying of people struggling to make a living whilst coping with the challenges a disability brings is simply heinous. Why does this happen? Does it start in the school playground when anyone ‘different’ is singled out for ridicule – the child with glasses, the kid with spots?

A bully is essentially a weak person exerting power and authority over those they deem even weaker than themselves to boost their own fragile ego. The person being bullied may find it harder to fight back if they are also disabled or have a long-term illness – in my case, I was adjusting to my diagnosis of MS, the implications it would have for my life, family and career and also going through Alemtuzumab treatment. At times it felt as if I was fighting a war on several fronts.

Why did I put up with this treatment? The daily humiliation tore at my soul and took me down to the darkest depths of despair. One evening, shortly before I was sacked, I sent The Teenager to a friend, sat on my sofa and cried myself hoarse. I was utterly defeated and broken. I had reached my absolute limit. Three people had systematically destroyed my self-confidence and belief in myself in a way no diagnosis of MS ever could.

I stayed as I was determined to remain in work, at least until I found a better job. I accepted the treatment meted out to me, I plastered a false smile on my face which barely hid my pain. Inside I was dying. Five months on, I am slowly rebuilding myself. The damage has run deep, the humiliation deeper.

I will return to my former self and I will be stronger.

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Mar 01 2013
20 Comments
Work and Studying

I Fought Back…And Won

Actually, I canI was sacked from my job last October for having MS, preceded by a vicious campaign of bullying and harrassment which almost drove me over the edge. At the same time, I was struggling to cope with my diagnosis and had also just been through Alemtuzumab treatment in the summer.

The day I was sacked,  I went home in shock. I was at my lowest ebb. The drip-drip effect of the bullying had left me sapped of confidence, drained of energy and incapable of any positive thinking. The sacking was the culmination of a truly horrific year. How anyone can bully a person going through a diganosis of MS is beyond me and the cruelty of it still astounds me.

I decided to accept my fate and leave it at that. But then I got angry, then furious. Was I really just going to walk away? Luckily, I still had one tiny scrap of fight left in me and so began a long legal process.

I am over the moon to report that I have now won my case. The matter is settled and it is time to move on, with my dignity and pride restored.

Bullying at work can be insidious. It is not always immediately obvious. It can start insignificantly and like an abusive partner, can slowly erode your confidence, your judgement and your rational thinking. When the bullying then escalates, you feel too undermined and isolated to fight back.

Bullying someone with MS (or any other serious illness) is cowardly. The bullying may come from a position of strength, from their status in work, but it is only carried out by weak people who take delight in hurting others who are already in pain.

I have fought a long, exhausting battle and was close to giving up along the way, such was the hold these people still had over me in my mind. It’s only thanks to family, friends, fellow MSers and a fabulous lawyer that I got to this point.

If you are in the same position I was, don’t accept it. You are worth more than that. Keep notes of every incident no matter how small, every date. Surround yourself  with a strong network and most importantly, realise that it is not your fault.

It’s a beautiful feeling to wake up every morning knowing I am no longer bullied. I am a worthy person and I will go on to better things. As they say, success is the best revenge.

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Feb 19 2013
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Work and Studying

Perks of the Job

An unexpected bonus of working in other people’s houses as a builder’s mate is not the coffee on tap, the bacon butties or the biscuits.

I’ll let you into a little secret – it’s the sneaky pleasure of having a nose around.

Me and the builder don’t talk about jobs in terms of what work we actually did there, it’s more, ‘oh, you must remember that one, you know, the one with the awful, red, flowery wallpaper and bizarre yellow sofas’ or ‘the one with all those very odd mirrors in the bedroom.’

It’s great fun, passes the time of day and you can tell a lot from people’s houses. Does that make me sound awful? C’mon, we all do it, don’t we?

I particularly like working in houses with lots of books and am vaguely suspicious when they’re conspicuously absent. Many a happy coffee-break has been passed looking through the shelves thinking, ‘ooh, read that’ or, ‘oh, that looks interesting.’ Same for artwork and pictures. And I adore family photographs.

We’ve worked in some creepy houses though. One had a bedroom stuffed full of life-size dolls. The owner was in her 30’s. In another, there was a massive model railway track taking up the biggest room upstairs, the bathroom we were working on was tiny and the owner worked nights, so all we heard were sinister snores from down a very and gloomy dark corridor.

On the upside, I’ve picked up some fabulous home decoration tips. People have the most brilliant ideas. My favourite was the huge hallway, a large square room basically,  painted entirely in black. Sounds hideous, but it was stunning. My hall is the size of an outdoor toilet so I don’t think I can steal that idea. And I definitely couldn’t fit in the matching chandelier.

Anyway, we had a very productive day yesterday pulling out an old bathroom suite ready for the new one. Then the builder asked me to pop a few tiles off and handed me a hammer and chisel. Easy. Four tiles in, there was an anguished cry. I popped my head round the corner to where the builder was standing. The entire other side of the wall had cracked.

Change of plan – we’re plastering today…

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Feb 19 2013
6 Comments
Work and Studying

Studying…Meh…

Just a quick post – I’m in the final year of my degree and my brain’s turned to mush, so until October when I can pull on my cap and gown, I’m going to blog every other day rather than every day.

Don’t worry, I’m still a mouthy so-and-so…

p.s. new blog post will be published in a couple of hours then I’ll see you Thursday – wish me luck!

 

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Feb 11 2013
12 Comments
Work and Studying

The Plugholes Are Now Sparkling….

….I have also done three loads of laundry, washed all the cushion covers, baked a banana and walnut loaf, cleaned the fridge, shredded a huge pile of paperwork and sorted out my kitchen cupboards.

Domestic diva? I wish. It appears I would rather pluck a bunch of yucky hairs from the plugholes with a wooden barbecue skewer than sit down and study.

I have one year left of a six-year part time degree course. I could have graduated last year, without honours, but I’m awkward like that. Or a masochist. University officially started on Saturday, but I didn’t. I tried. I laid out all the books, printed off loads of information, stocked up on post-it notes, new pens, a brand new folder.

I sit at my desk, scrolling through the online learning guides, thinking, ‘oh, how interesting’ for about 15 seconds, then click on to my Twitter feed instead. Yesterday I sat down to read the newspaper for five minutes and an hour later I had read it from cover to cover. Who knew the letters page and obituaries could be so fascinating?

I can blame MS for this, but only partly. At the end of the last academic year I was in the middle of a pretty major relapse, the steroids were keeping me up all night and my brain was in meltdown. It refused to remember one single fact, one theory. I struggled through and gleefully chucked the notes in the bin after the exam. Last July. Now, 7 months later, it’s hard to pick up the thread again.

The thought of planning and writing an essay fills me with dread. Researching, indexing, referencing all seem like scientific impossibilities. I have printed off our official Harvard reference guide (all 35 pages of it) and have only read up to page 8.

To prove I could do it, I pulled out all my essays from last year. Bad move. Who wrote these? They were pretty good and I was impressed until I realised I had written them. My standards were obviously a lot higher back then.

I will muddle through. I will play with the post-it notes and highlight noteworthy points in my books. I am hoping that if I read the same pages over and over again I will absorb the facts by osmosis. Until then, I have the vacuum cleaner filter to wash and lightbulbs to polish….

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