Category: Workplace stress

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COVID AND CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROM

24 April 2022

COVID AND CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROM

A couple of weeks ago, my husband asked me why I was always so tired all of the time and why I tired so easily. I guess I felt so “blah” that I never gave it much thought, that I was so relieved to be able to just stop whatever I was doing that I never questioned it. So I looked fatigue up. CFS, in relation to COVID, has lots of write-ups. Generally speaking, COVID fatigue only lasts a few days to a few weeks (my COVID was February/ March of last year and here I am, physically still tired and mentally foggy today). The one thing the numerous articles had in common was that we still do not know all of the long-term effects of having had COVID, and that there is an increasing awareness of what is called “Long-Haul” COVID.

According to an article in Healthline, “one 2021 study Trusted Source collected information from more than 3,000 people in 56 countries who had COVID-19 and experienced symptoms lasting longer than 28 days. The researchers noted several similarities between long COVID and CFS. At 6 months with long COVID, study participants reported three common symptoms: fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, and post-exertional malaise (PEM). PEM occurs if someone has worse symptoms following physical or mental activity. This mirrors what happens in CFS, when people may find it difficult to do the tasks they want to do. The same study found that nearly half of the participants had to reduce their workload due to their symptoms, and 22 percent were unable to work at all.”

I have mentioned in past posts that my former manic episodes were a mixed blessing. I did not need much sleep and I accomplished an amazing amount of tasks. That sense of constant animation was tempered by my bipolar meds when I began taking them, but I considered the loss of some motivation acceptable because it also tempered the depths of my depression episodes. Still, nothing seemed to answer constant fatigue I live with every day now. I can still push myself, but it is difficult. Yesterday I gardened for a couple of hours, but I had to drag myself to do it. It was the first day where the weather was agreeable enough to force myself to tackle the overgrown retaining wall and the Hell-strip. I never see this side of the house anymore, so when I did I was mortified. I accomplished a lot. Not everything I hoped for, but my mind was fuzzy as it always seems to be, and the work tired me enough that I took a two-hour nap. I would have napped longer but then I would have missed dinner.

I met with one of my doctors this week and we discussed my husband’s comment regarding my constant fatigue. She agreed that there is a physical link to my constant tiredness, and that as we move further away from the initial onset of COVID, new short- and long-term health issues are being discovered (there is a study being conducted on US veterans on the effect COVID and heart disease). She thinks that my physical manifestation is exacerbated by the mental exhaustion from anxiety and persistent depression, both of which have maintained higher than normal levels because of work-related issues this last year, and the societal effects of COVID such as isolation. It seems to make sense since my anxiety levels fluctuate between high and higher throughout the work day. Her only recommendation was to keep on doing the stress-relieving activities I have been doing all along. If it works even in the slightest, keep it going.

Anyway, that is enough to think about for now. I would be interested to hear what others are feeling.

Tschüss,

Urs

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APATHY

9 April, 2022

/ˈapəTHē/  (Noun) lack of interest, lack of enthusiasm, or lack of concern.

I had chosen two other subjects for this post, but alas, I became very “blah” about them and stopped. Being that it has been a while since I posted last, it occurred to me that my general indifference to almost everything might be a subject I could stay on course with because there is plenty of fuel to keep it burning. 

Covid-19 has changed the way many people act and react over things. It is not the short-term disappointment of a temporary dip in the stock market, or do I wear a mask or not. Covid-19 has become the long term gift that just keeps on giving. The changes and often bizarre effects of having had Covid are as stoppable as a moving train (not), and equally as hard to jump on to. Mutations of the virus, mask mandates and rescission, vaccines, anti-vaxxers, travel restrictions and quarantines, things which literally change day to day … how do you keep up and stay informed without wearing yourself out? Staying even partly informed is exhausting.

I realized that I am living with a great deal of apathy – different from my normal course of depression which situationally sits at about an 7 to 9 out of 10 – and I also realized that the isolation and imprint of crises after crises from Corona virus is probably the cause. On any given day of depression I might be mopey, have firm “no’s” on things I do not want to do, I might feel like crying for no reason at all, I do things that need to get done but I do them dragging my feet. If I am in an opposite spell of mania, well, Hell, there ain’t no stoppin’ me now! I am that freight train. You name it and I’ll have done yesterday! I actually miss those days. I could go on for days on end doing “stuff,” but that just doesn’t happen anymore.

Anxiety is also one of those unpleasant things I live with every day and often tends to be holding hands with Apathy, hopping and skipping down the trail of life. But apathy is new to my palette. I know what I need to do but I have no interest in doing any of it. Decision making is for others. Action is best left to real super heroes. There is no moaning, “Oh! Not now.” I have managed to put off even the simplest and most mundane of tasks because I just don’t have the energy (or the interest) in doing them. I have a box of my parents and grandparents papers sitting in a box under the chair in my sitting room. It has been there about a year and I have only peeked through it peripherally. I have also needed to work in the garden for quite a long time. Bad weather has been my friend so that I do not have to commit to doing any of it, but a day finally came up last weekend where I was able to get a couple of ours in. Despite the drudgery of it all, I was pleased with the tiny quarter I cleared up. Of course, it brought to attention a garden path (this makes at least two now) that needs to be gutted and re-laid. I’d rather run in front of a car, but alas, I am not interested in getting out of my chair to do anything other than maybe go take yet another nap. Naps are good, they require very little of me.

Experts and those interested in the subject of Apathy, which many believe is the byproduct of the Covid pandemic, its social distancing, its isolation, the fear of coming into contact with others, years of working from home (isolation again) for so many, fear of large traditional gatherings like weddings and holidays, and the stresses and anxieties of those who still work directly with the public, and the lack of trust in others say that Apathy may have only been a nominal part of the lives of few, but Corona has given it a spark which has taken off like wildfire. Experts agree that it is going to take many years and a lot to combat, especially given mask requirements in many places still, enforced social distancing, and wariness of crowds such as sporting events, concerts, farmers’ markets, and cruises … nobody wants to end up forcefully trapped and quarantined of a boat which has already happened. 

There are a few things experts suggest for battling Apathy:

  • One is to use a planner (on your computer, or old-school paper) and plan out the overburdensome list of things you need to do, don’t plan too much in one day, do important highlights in pink and softer to-do’s in yellow, and stay FIRM to that calendar. 
  • Walk or exercise for half an hour each day if you are not already active.
  • Engage with nature and your senses. Focus on the nature happening around you … the birds, the squirrels, the rustling leaves and branches of trees.
  • Try breathing exercises such as 5-5-5 or 4-7-8 to help cleanse the mind and make it ready to take on new things (you can Goggle these).

Let me know what your starting point happens to be, and what you are doing to take steps back to “normalcy.” I do not think we will ever be “normal” again, but we can try to get close.

Blessings and to success,

Baer

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THINGS WE LOST WITH COVID

12 March, 2022

THINGS WE LOST WITH COVID

Aside from the losses of family, friends, and loved ones to Covid, the survivors now live in a very different world. Young children never knew a world without masks. There was a State law mask-mandate in New Jersey until this last week. Masks are now optional and as crowed as our city-scape is, I would guess maybe only half of all people still wear them. For some like me, it is situational. If I am in a crowd or someplace I am not comfortable with, I wear it. When Covid number rise again, which epidemiologists are certain will happen 1. Due to increased summertime travel (after two years of practically no major vacations outside the US border), and 2. The normal rise in general infections come fall and winter. I am supposed to go to a family wedding (my rare opportunity to see both of my beloved sisters at the same time) in Upstate New York in August, assuming I can get a cabin with its own bathroom. You know me, my sense of adventure and the great wild way is going to Short Hills Mall before the store doors to Chanel and Cartier are open and I am navigating oblivious women with strollers. The wedding will be at a camp ground and outdoors so I am moderately nervous about the mask thing because USNY tends to be Trump Land so vaccinations are likely hit-and-miss.

One thing that was lost, or covered up by, was simple social politeness, greetings as we pass each other walking down the sidewalk. I have always greeted strangers, or people I encountered daily, on the sidewalk with a smile and a “Good morning,” or whatever time of the day it was. You cannot see that in a mask. People stopped trusting one another and the sidewalks became danger zones where you shuffled past oncoming pedestrians as quickly as possible. This last week as I traversed the sidewalks with no mask, I went back to my normal smile and greet, and I noticed two things that that pre-covid rarely happened: almost everyone I greeted refused to make eye contact and none of them returned to greeting. People appear to not want to invest themselves in basic humanity anymore.

There is also a crowd shift, a Great Migration, taking place. Shops and restaurants in metropolitan New York have closed due to covid. Available amenities have downsized, moved, or closed for reasons ranging from difficulty finding employees to supply chain issues to difficulty maintaining enough of a retail client base to stay open. One serious trend we are seeing are the large number of families who are tired of Covid measures in congested areas like ours who are fleeing enmasse to larger houses and spaces, large yards for play further apart from the neighbors, and down payments that match trying to keep kids in private schools near New Your City and pay exorbitant rent or mortgages. Zoom and telecommuting have made such moves easier on parents who no longer need to share the breakfast table with their children as a work space.

My personal travel is hopefully going to improve this year since it has been two years since I last visited my normal haunts. I am looking at my beloved Spain, Ireland, and Switzerland. It will rest largely on quarantining laws crossing borders. All I want is to lay under a straw umbrella with my toes in the sand at Puerta Banus Marbella and order my pilpil from the nearby chirangita. Ah, one can hope. For those of you who do not want the hassles of crossing the US border, keep in mind that Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are US territories so you can come and go freely. And there is a Ritz-Carleton on St. Thomas so that you don’t have to feel like you are roughing it.

The supply chain has been severely disrupted, and although it has affected everything from clothes to cars, I am talking specifically food and groceries. I could not get my base-supply of Pellegrino for over a month. We ended up buying a Soda Stream, which is not as convenient as opening a Pellegrino, but it serves its purpose. Markets are out of lots of things. My favorite health cereal has been MIA for over a month. My flavored Pellegrino is represented by only one 8-pack each … once I buy them, the shelves are empty. Even things I would never buy amaze me. Products are lined up at the edge of the shelf, one unit deep and ten wide in order to give the appearance there is more there than there actually is. Because of this, Amazon has become my go-to. Not that I want to give this power to Bezos, but desperate times call for things that actually work.

Think of what has been important you that has been affected by covid. Have you been able to work around these issues, or have you put them out of sight/out of mind for now. 

And do not forget to smile at a stranger. It might be the only one they get that day.

Blessings,

Baer

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STILL FEELING RATTLED

I am even more convinced that those who are not Bipolar have only a foggy idea of what it really means to be Bipolar, and they have an even foggier idea how it affects those of us living with it and how it influences our behavior. 

I was typically half an hour early for work yesterday so before work began I asked for an impromptu meeting with one of my directors to discuss this procession of meetings they have been having with me. I provided her with a complete year of my normal paperwork as well as documents I created specifically for record keeping to demonstrate what my paperwork looks like normally, not the sorry state of a strained September/October Bipolar mess, and record keeping forms specific to what we are doing (she had never seen them before). It was my hope that this was enough to bring about an end to what feels like a weekly interrogation. Sadly, that will not be the way it will work, although my boss recognized that during these meetings she can tell by my face that I am very tense, anxious, and upset. My General Anxiety baseline is five out of ten and my anxiety and worry clearly rockets to the top of scale and higher during these meetings. I need to find ways to try to control emotions during the questioning, especially since we are now dealing with paperwork and answers that are six months old and my recall has been greatly diminished by time and Bipolar while my anxiety and despair are at their peaks. My anxiety and depression are always there, and it is hard to explain to friends and loved ones that it is my nature, beyond my control, to worry about things that have yet to happen, like all of the upcoming meetings I still have to have with Admin.

One sort of reassurance of the impromptu meeting was being told that I am not being targeted, that this situation and the history of events leading up to it are not about me alone. The meetings leading up to my request for my ADA rights put to light problems within the environment/people I was leaving. Another Admin took my position while they waited on my replacement. Red flags were raised and those persons will have their own set of meetings in due time.

Aside from that, life goes on. I will admit that I am learning to make new uses of weekends – especially last weekend’s four-day holiday weekend – taking naps. It is a beautiful time where my mind gets a break and refreshes itself between tasks, not to overlook my depression which also gets a reprieve while sleeping. Sleep is a beautiful friend when the brain is challenged or can’t cope. I took a nap yesterday and must have been so exhausted from my week that when the alarm went off I was completely disoriented and went into a panic that I had messed up my work schedule. Is that a clue that worrying about work often interferes with and influences even my time away?

In keeping with the theme of uncooperative and unpredictable, how about our weather lately? The week before the long Presidents’ Day weekend was nice and warm so I planned to spend the long peaceful weekend beginning prep work in the garden for spring … cutting back the roses and raking up all of the leaves I had used for bedding insulation, in addition to raking up plenty of stray leaves and dead-heading all of the ghostly remains of the Hosta and Irises. Gardening can be very therapeutic in good weather for as long as my back holds out. Plus, I still have several areas where nothing grows well and I need to plan and find new vegetation. This year I might try Bougainvillea, and maybe a fig tree. Don’t laugh, but since not even grass, peas, squash, rhubarb, and corn will not grow there, I am hoping for something less demanding of the soil that will take easier … realistic looking astro-turf?!

I’ll take ideas if you have any!

Tshuss,Noor

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WHAT LIES BENEATH

To be well-heeled is to be the object of envy of others. At first (and maybe the only) glance, I would agree. If you saw me finely dressed and layered in the likes of Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Bulgari, Yurman and more, have you already misjudged me? These layers are a mere shroud, a disguise. They envelope a very fragile skin that takes me great effort to hide my true self from others. What could possibly be wrong with me? Take the time to look beneath the layers and you will see that my true skin is transparent. The tornadic winds that tear within the shell of my body are horrifying as you watch them move through me and devastate my body and mind, the lashing rain which never stops and often results in real tears of my own on the outside. The endless bolts of lightning ripping throughout my body, whipping me into an uncontrollable and disorienting frenzy of internal panic attacks on the inside, most for no reason. I am more Frankenstein’s monster than I am the well-heeled, cheerful Sunday stroller walking down Fifth Avenue as I first appeared to you.

No one really understands the workings (and failures) of the bipolar mind better than another bipolar or a doctor-specialist. Coming in a close second are those individuals who have a strong and knowledgeable connection to a bipolar person. At first glance, bipolars aren’t any different than the next person on the street. But now imagine that you are Frankenstein’s monster trying to navigate your way through the minutiae of life that others pass through with ease. You feel as if life has played a cruel and unjust joke on you and purposely set out to take you down. Whatever the problem is that you are experiencing, imagine magnifying it ten-fold. Your heart will be racing from the anxiety and your chest is ready to explode, while at the same time you are just so tired and defeated and depressed that you could lay down on a dirty city sidewalk and go to sleep.

I really thought that with this new blog I would be writing about the beautiful and enlightening experiences that would make silliness or humor out of my bipolar experiences, or at least make the bipolar more palatable. Recently, that is not how it is working, and I am locked in a box of negativity, self-defense, depression, anxiety and turmoil.

The first quarter at my company went off with a really big bang … in a very, very bad way. After only two disastrous months in my new department, I felt I had no choice but to approach my employers and ask for a Reasonable Accommodation based upon my rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), even though I knew there was no place to move me. I would not have been surprised to be let go (I am sure the company’s legal team made sure to keep me there for fear of a lawsuit). It was ok at first, a lot of boredom and feeling like a pinball as I bounced from department to department to department throughout the day. I no longer have “my space,” no private office area to hang my coat and bag, no place to rest for five minutes to gather my thoughts or to self-reflect. But I deal with it.

And then the assault on my paperwork for those two months began. I was torn to shreds on Zoom by members of management who do not seem to have a grasp on what bipolar does to a person’s ability (or lack of ability) to think and act coherently. I was so demoralized that suddenly the 11 years I had worked there was of no merit or value. My future was being determined by the two months I would consider the worst two months of my 11 year history there, two months where I faced open hostility in my office, and a general tone of “not available” to me when I did have a question. The Admin I sat with clearly has no understanding of the bipolar mind in motion, the lack of clarity, the panic, the depression, “fight or flight,” which is usually flight for me. It has been having such a negative effect on my mind and body that I have returned to where I can’t eat, I am exhausted all day long, and all I want to do is sleep. 

I had a brief reprieve last week courtesy of catching a cold (not Covid). I woke Saturday very ill. I slept the entire weekend. Work’s health-protocol kept me home Monday and Tuesday, so no planning time for the Wednesday torture session. So I slept! I have also decided that when the next email comes to “continue” the conversation, I need to speak up for myself and ask for a pause while they read the one whole year’s worth of Lesson Plans, Notes, and brief Narratives to see what my notes USUALLY look like. They will not be perfect, but they are night and day compared to the Hell and torture they have been putting me though. After all, it was only two HOFFIFIC months where my bipolar was out of control compared to eleven years of STELLAR Reports, Narratives, and Conferencing. Something has to give, and if I am asked to bite the bullet, I may need to have the bullet bite back, at which point there is no point of return.

What would you do???

Blessings,

Noor

PS. Today is my birthday. The ultimate gift would be early retirement, only gotten through my husband, adding a few more productive and able-bodied years to the construction, decoration, and landscaping of our retirement home. This body is not getting any younger or more able, so every year counts.

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TRYING TO KEEP MY HEAD ABOVE THE WAVES

As promised, there will be no rhyme or reason to what I publish and when. The last few weeks have been excessively challenging. For some unspecified reason, my paperwork for September, October, and November has been the source of interest for my bosses. I will be the first to admit that those months were jarring and atypical of work that spans 11 years there. In those months, I was going through a critical co-worker crisis, my depression went from a 3 to 8 or 9 (10 being worst), my anxiety peaked at 10, there are lingering concerns with my husband’s health, and my sisters and I are at wit’s end dealing with the needs of our aging parents, one on each coast. And now I have weekly meetings at work to “correct” future paperwork. I always go into the meeting in great trepidation, and in turn leave, feeling battered and ready to quit. I only have four-and-a-half months left in the calendar year.

Still, in the midst of this particularly traumatizing situation, I know that if they did not care they would not put time in on me. But it is hard none-the-less. I have upped my psychologist visits to every week instead of every 2-3 weeks. And I will see my psychiatrist this week, and probably increase the frequency of that as well. Since I am popping Ativan like candy, I am sure we will flex some of my meds. I just can’t wait for the time when I can spend my days calmer, arranging flowers and furniture in my new home, and tilling soil and rocks in the flower beds of my new gardens. My biggest anxiety will be avoiding cattle and rattlesnakes.

What monsters have been keeping you awake at night?

Blessings,

Noor