When the first cracks appeared in my writing
“You are killing yourself for a job that would replace you within a week if you dropped dead. Take care of yourself.” - Jet Li
In my first blog I explained that it took me 20 years of working as a policy advisor and a lower back injury to realize that I lost my writing style. Join me on my journey of physical recovery and how this eventually helped to find the way back to my own writing style. And myself.. Get inspired!
January 2021. Stuffed with painkillers my head felt fuzzy. Just a few weeks ago a friendly neurologist explained to me that women between 40 and 50 often get a lower back hernia without knowing it. Women have a so-called high pain threshold or pain tolerance.
On hearing this I did not feel proud of myself. It only meant that I ignored high pain levels and put my work as a number one priority in my life. Now my lower back was saying: ´It is payback time!’ My head though wanted the recovery process to go faster than my body actually could handle. So I needed something to temper my fast working brain. As a child and later in life I kept diaries. Working as a patient advocate patients would speak about pain or treatment diaries. A means to ventilate bad news conversations, painful treatments, and corresponding emotions. On hearing this I would always nod and say encouragingly: “Good for you!”
Now I was a patient and I desperately needed to ventilate my thoughts. Not behind the computer but on a piece of paper. Days became weeks and soon I had written pages full about my progress. All written in a typical writing style like I was taking minutes from a meeting.
“Today was physiotherapy day. The hip flexibility is progressing. The next 3 weeks is going to be about practicing this movement. Furthermore, focus on resting and regaining daily activities. What is this about? Getting dressed, making breakfast, and going for a small walk. Maybe clean the kitchen counter.”
Writing does good, it gives a routine
Once I started writing without thinking about the content, it helped forget about the pain and the unknowingness of how long my journey of recovery would be. It was also confrontational as it brought back painful memories. Events and situations when I ignored my body signals and continued working. I came to realize that for the last 20 years I had a yoga mattress lying around my office. Between meetings or in a lunchbreak I would lie down. Sometimes I used the mattress for months in a row. For my colleagues it became normal to see me like that. Slowly a pattern unraveled of structurally overburdening my lower back throughout my working life.
“I have come to realize that my head is always on work mode. Even outside working hours. And yes; also sometimes on holidays. Despite the loving warnings of people who are the closest to me. But they just don’t seem to understand that it comes with my job. Contemplating about a topic or a dilemma does not stop after office hours..”
In all those years no boss sent me home. I was praised for my work ethos and a reliable employee. Saying with a smile on my face while hiding my pain:
“When this project is behind my back (!!), the stress will get out of my lower back!”
At that point in my life I had convinced myself that the returning back problems were stress related. And after having spent months in corona lockdowns thus hours behind a home computer screen, it was normal to complain about back pain. Cause everybody was complaining about it. When I finally was able to see a physiotherapist it took weeks before her words reached my heart:
“Anni, a lower back hernia you don’t get solemnly due to stress.”
March 2021 I lay on the couch and opened my work laptop. I was about to log in to what was to be the final ZOOM meeting of my working life. Well, meeting.. a farewell to my colleagues, the volunteers and other people I had worked with. I was leaving this job whilst being unfit to work. A permanent contract was not given to me. In this uncertain corona times the patient advocacy organization I had worked for had an unstable budget. In my daily writings I did not write anything about how I felt having to leave a job in this state. What I did write though was a long to-do list with practical tasks and information that needed to be handed over to colleagues.
When my face appeared on screen I put on my usual ‘hide my pain’ smile. For the next half hour I half listened to the standard “thank you for your hard work" and other appraisal talks. When the final goodbyes and polite ‘let’s keep in touch!’ were said I found myself alone in the Zoom room staring at myself. The smile of my face slowly glided away, I suddenly looked old and it scared me. The sharp pain in my left leg I could not ignore anymore. I was about to switch off the laptop when Arno’s face appeared next to me on the screen. There was silence as we just looked at each other.
At that moment I broke down
My eyes filled with tears and I saw the same thing happening to him. Arno was terminally ill and lived in ‘mercy time’ as he would always phrase it. He took on every experimental treatment that could prolong his life. Meanwhile juggling with the time that was left for him to be with his family, passing on his knowledge of his own life work. And besides all that he dedicated his time as a patient experience expert. Arno broke the silence asking “How are you?”
Usually a question I would ask him first. On which he would give me a latest update about some new life - prolonging medication or radiation therapy that would soon start. Now we were both patients. A deep sense of connection rose in me. This was something I never felt before towards patients when I was in my work function. Arno continued:
“Anni, I just want to say that I appreciate your passionate work drive. You were honest when you said you had little knowledge on bowel cancer and bowel cancer research. Instead you gave us patient experts space for our knowledge and experience. You knew just exactly how to make the right connection with scientific research groups. You translated our language to the language of the researchers. I worked alongside many patient advocates. I dare to say you were exceptional. Now it is time to take care of yourself!”
I wanted to thank him but no words came out of my mouth. Instead I nodded and showed a thumbs up. After closing my laptop a fatigue came up making me want to fall asleep. But a stream of thoughts kept me awake. His last sentence buzzed through my head.
Is that the reason that I did not take care of myself? I always worked for people who were worse of than me. So I trivialized my pain and continued to work consecutively in a sitting position for long hours. These people, however, did not know if they had months or weeks to live so they lived from day to day. Because they knew every moment of the day was precious. For they lived knowing it would end soon.
Until that moment with Arno I had not really listen and comprehended fully the message of people who are not curable:
You need to prioritize life over work
A week later my boss came to pick up my work laptop. My working life was put on hold for an undetermined time. Writing for work had stopped. Writing for myself had now really begun.