Tag Archives: the boss

The One Where We Almost Go Under

I work hard, and so does my Boss, aka Best Friend.

He employed me when no one else would and understands more about MS than anyone I know.

He knows exactly why I can sit on a staircase and nod off within three minutes, or indeed a pile of plasterboard.

He can see my brain go numb when we talk about the next phase of building work. He even picks me up every day to make my life easier, and there’s always a fresh coffee waiting for me in the van.

So when we arrived at our latest project last week and I was so bone-tired I slumped on the doorstep, I had no idea of what was to come.

After a quick catch-up chat, he opened the van; his drill is always floating around at the back somewhere. But this time it wasn’t. Weird. Searching for it, he pulled the ten sheets of plasterboard he had bought the day before to one side, as they were hiding the shelves.

They were all empty.

Every single power tool was gone. Stolen. Half the van was bare. Someone, probably several people, had emptied his van of everything they could carry. Fifteen to twenty power tools were stolen. The cost runs into thousands, having been built up over the years.

We were left with a bag of hand tools and a radio.

I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed my friend so broken. His van is precious, and without it we don’t really have a business.

So, to whoever walked or drove off with a van full of tools, neatly boxed, perfectly stacked, you have absolutely no idea what you have done.

I’m trying not to be bitter. Bad things happen. But to clear out an entire van is beyond cruel. It’s a livelihood. Several.

A few days on, our mood is still sombre but we’re managing. We’ve pulled in favours from friends in the hope that we don’t let our customers down. But every time I look in the back of the van and see the empty spaces, my stomach lurches.

It’s a massive blow but I hope we will come back from this. The timing is terrible, MS is playing up and we’re scrabbling around with one new drill (hundreds of wasted pounds) and a list of prioritised tools, a kind of shopping list. What do we need the most, right now? (I voted for a little hand-held blower, the Boss for an angle grinder, gah).

To be robbed so comprehensively is utterly breathtaking.

Sadly, at least I now have an idea of what to get The Boss as a birthday present next month …

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Being Ill Is Fun and Other Myths …

The Boss has toothache.

Really, really, down-to-the-nerve toothache.

Excruciating.

We were chatting over coffee last week (with him wincing every time he took a sip, bless him) when he said something along the lines of:

‘You know what, I always thought it would be pretty cushy being ill. Lying on the sofa, binge-watching Netflix, eating sweets. But it’s nothing like I thought it would be.’

I haven’t been too well these last few weeks and it’s scared me; not being able to cook a proper meal, sleeping for so long every afternoon, shooting nerve pains. And that’s without the ever-growing hernia.

But he’s right. Before MS, probably like most workers, I thought a sick day was a euphemism for ‘duvet-day’. I’ve now learned the hard way that sick days are only fun when … you’re fairly healthy.

Real sick days are just that, sick days. You feel dreadful. You wake up tired, knock into everything, trip downstairs, and it’s all downhill from there.

Lying on the sofa isn’t safe, fun or secure when you realise that the only person keeping the whole show on the road is … YOU. There is no one to put the bins out, feed the cat, order shopping, clean, cook.

I’ve lost count of the times I have forfeited dinner, only to starve until The Boss picks me up in the morning with some kind of breakfast waiting for me.

As the only bill-payer in my household, the pressure to recover is immense, so there are no days in bed, no recovery time. It’s a case of getting over the worst and getting back to work.

Which I do, time and time again. Take yesterday: in the van on the way to work, I told The Boss that even though my right arm was numb, I would be fine. I ignored the shooting nerve pains and the general uncomfortable sensations in my fingers.

I got through the day with my left arm. It’s what you do, without that safety net.

The Boss will get his dental treatment. I will keep on taking my medication, and for the foreseeable future, two hour afternoon sleeps will be the norm.

A healthy sick day?

Yes, please.

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Working With MS …

dogAfter Sickness-gate with The Boss, things are at last returning to normal on the work front.

He hasn’t eaten for four days since his dodgy KFC (if only I were so blessed), and he’s still looking distinctly peaky, but yesterday I made him park up and go to the local One Stop Shop for some food.

He came back with four tins of Oxtail Soup (bleugh) and some white bread (really?).

I’ve mollycoddled him, asked him how he’s doing at regular intervals, texted him GIFs of dancing Minions, soothed his fevered brow and made sure he’s ordered a whole bunch of steel beams and cement for work.

It’s been a testing few days, especially as I have excruciating neck and back pain accompanied by electric shocks in my neck every time I move. I mentioned it to him earlier, expecting reciprocal sympathy and maybe an offer of a Domino’s pizza for dinner.

No such luck.

‘It’s different for you, you’re always ill, so if you’re always ill, it’s not like me? I’m at death’s door.’

Fair point. And perhaps The Boss and everyone who knows me in work has also got used to me being ‘ill’. I sulked a bit at this (we were stuck in traffic).

‘How’s that fair then? If I’m always ill, you should be considerate, kind and, well, caring?’

The Boss thought about this for quite a long time.

‘Yeah, we’re all mates, but, you fall asleep all the time. You always take a book to work, big ones with small writing. You finish early. We’re just used to you being … different?’

Another fair point. There’s not many jobs that would allow me to sleep whenever I wanted to, or take a book to pass the time when we’re waiting for a skip or a grab lorry. The Boss knows I’m brilliant, when I’m brilliant, and he too has built in compensation for when I’m conversely under par.

Which is actually a compliment and I take it as such.

Working for a friend, who rescued me when I was sacked from my previous job due to MS was a godsend. For both of us. I’d helped him start up the company years before, and karma brought the fortune full circle. I was able to fit into his company with no problem. It helps that I’m bossy – we’re good cop, bad cop with extra caffeine.

Sometimes, especially during this DLA-Depression, I love work, no matter how tired I am. The camaraderie, the ‘banter’, the normality of it all. Other times, I fantasise about being at home all day, being ill, giving in to it all.

Which is how I think the DWP would like me to be.

Ultimately, I may have no choice.

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The One Where I’m Put Into Storage …

storageThe Boss has finally noticed that I’m not operating at full strength over the last couple of months so has decided to put me into storage.

We’re working on a particularly large renovation so he hired a storage container for me to use as an on-site office, which means I’m within yelling distance, but far enough away to be able to doze off and/or daydream.

He bought me a MacBook Air for me to project manage everything and so far I have created some lovely colour-coded tables and notebooks. I’ve played around with the fonts and sizes and can easily pass a couple of hours highlighting and un-highlighting everything in bold or itallic.

My office also doubles as a mini-kitchen, complete with a table and chairs for the labourers to take their breaks. I have a kettle, microwave, toaster, fridge and radio, plus ample supplies of biscuits which is an ongoing struggle of avoidance. I also have a set of shelves where I have arranged (and rearranged) loo roll, cloths, tea-towels, kitchen spray, etc). It’s truly amazing what you can find to do in a storage container.

I miss being more hands-on, but my balance is shot, I don’t walk in a straight line and when I yawn, the labourers start yawning too. I’m a bad influence. So, The Boss does all the wandering around the site stuff, looking serious and important, then feeds all the relevant information back to me, which I promptly forget. After much trial and error, we’ve now developed a system of notes which he sends straight from his phone to my Mac. Genius. I then put them in the correct colour-coded table.

As I’ve been so poorly, The Boss has been picking me up for work recently and this is when the real work gets done. We brainstorm, which is quite funny as it’s my brain that’s playing up, but actually, it’s a good way to push projects forward as we swap ideas and chew over problems.

A couple of people have asked me why I’m so determined to stay in work despite feeling absolutely dreadful but I’d rather feel dreadful yet useful in work than dreadful and useless at home. I’ve been there, done that too many times.

However, I do have one fear. I remember as a kid watching a film where the baddie was hiding in a storage container at a port. The doors were closed and the last scene was of that container being craned onto a huge ship, bound for somewhere thousands of miles away. Every time I close my eyes (just for five minutes, lol), I worry that I’ll wake up on my way to China with nothing to sustain me but a packet of Kit-Kats and a half-eaten ham roll …

 

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Going Round In Circles

circles When I’m experiencing them, I’m never quite sure if a sudden surge in MS symptoms is a relapse or not.

I only get the definitive answer when I wake up one morning (days, weeks, months after) and I just know it’s over – it’s kind of a retrospective thing.

Today, hallelujah, is one of those days. The murky fog has cleared, my energy is restored to its usual low level and the world seems a much brighter place. I look back over the last couple of weeks and realise just how awful things were.

To begin with, I ignored the numbness down my right side, the dodgy tingling hand, the weak arm. Then came the beyond-out-of-proportion tiredness and jelly-brain. As is usual with a relapse, my world shrank. I did the bare minimum and I did it badly. Work was a nightmare (Boss not happy) and when I got home I slept (Teenager not happy), woke up and barely moved from my sofa.

After that came the symptom that left me stunned – my body seemed to want to pull to the right, so walking in a straight line was a bit tricky. I ended up turning right an awful lot, so much so that I might as well have been walking in circles. I slammed into walls, fell with a thud into my washing machine and tripped down five stairs, ending up lying dazed on the floor, squished between the bottom stair and my bureau, finding a long-lost catnip ball in the process.

The most worrying episode was when I was in the shower the other day. Again, my body wanted to jerk to the right. Unfortunately this meant I fell out of the shower and cracked my head against the toilet. As I was lying there, I was ever so grateful I hadn’t knocked myself out as the thought of paramedics finding me naked on the floor, crying and trying to cover up with a single flannel was unbearable.

After counting the cobwebs on the ceiling and noting the gaps in the silicone seal around the shower screen, I staggered to my feet, put my dressing gown on and sulked on the sofa for the rest of the day. Again.

So it’s over, for now; I’m back to the baseline, which seems to rise with every relapse. Whereas before I fretted about every tiny symptom, diligently jotting them down in my ‘MS Symptom’ book (one from 2013 – ‘my nose seems to itch more and swallowing is a bit of an issue’), I now have a much more ‘yeah, yeah’ attitude. It’s about accepting it and living day to day.

I can say that now. If you’d asked me last week however, I’d have given you a withering look and sighed.

Progress?

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