Friday, May 25, 2012

The Stress That Made Me Disabled

Stress is a major factor in living with and managing chronic medical conditions. This has been proven to be no different for me. In fact, I even take antidepressants to help manage day to day stress and have anxiety medications for those 'extra special' times. Stress is even the number one cause of my RA flares. I strongly believe stress is what finally caused my intestinal symptoms that led to the Celiac diagnosis and stress was the straw that broke the camels back, so-to-speak, that led to my disability.

After moving to St. Louis, I got a job working for a publishing company. It was pretty good money, and since it was such a large company I thought I would have excellent opportunities for growth. Unfortunately, it didn't take long before I realized I was working for a company with a complete lack of ethics. The first clue was when a supervisor made very loud racial comments and no one did or said anything about it. I finally got tired of it and went to HR to report it. They said they pulled her aside and talked to her about it anonymously. It apparently wasn't anonymous because that supervisor soon decided to take her revenge. At one point, during a review in which I reached all my goals and preformed my tasks perfectly, she said that there was no way she could give me a perfect score and she knew I had to be doing something wrong. She wouldn't sign off on my review until she went over things again and found something against me. And that is exactly what she did.

About this same time, they hired a new man who happened to have gone to high school with the VP of Customer Service. This new coworker also happened to have a liking for younger women. Before too long he was coming to my desk, and that of other female coworkers, running his hands through our hair, rubbing shoulders, making suggestive comments, etc. Most of us tried to say something however, he also had a terrible temper and was a very big dude. I mean 6'5'' ish and weighing 250-275 lbs. On one particular day I had finally had enough and said as much. He was so upset by me "rejecting" his behavior he threw a piece of his phone at the window breaking the blinds. Naturally, I was incredibly uncomfortable working so closely with this man and finally decided I needed to report it.

When I spoke to my boss I was informed that I wasn't the first or second person to complain about this specific person, but instead the fifth or sixth. In most companies today if one person has more than three of four sexual harassment complaints within the same year they aren't around much longer. But not at this company. He said he would take my complaint to HR immediately. Later, I was informed my supervisor had changed his mind, he'd had a "heart-to-heart" with the man and it wouldn't happen again. This didn't sit right with me. After all, this man and I were usually the last two at the office every night. I decided I have to take the complaint to HR myself. This caused huge repercussions for me. As it turned out, not only was this man friends with one of the VP's in the company but he was also drinking buddies with our boss. From that day on, I had a target on my back.

Anything and everything that I could get in trouble for I did. At one point, after a network crash, I was blamed and threatened to be written up because I type too fast, causing the crash. I was accused of trying to start fights with various coworkers over everything from customer complaints to trying to steal boyfriends. At one point they accused me of threatening a coworker with a shoe. Every day it was something else to get me to either quit, or do something to get fired. They would drop angry customers into my voicemail stating I was the "Complaints Department" and would take messages and not give them to me. I even received threats for reporting the harassment on Facebook as well as in my personal and company emails and on my cell phone. Unfortunately for them, I kept a perfect work record through all of this, though the stress began taking it's toll on my body. I began to miss more and more work and would spend a significant amount of time in the bathroom throwing up. This only added fuel to the fire and in an effort to discredit my sexual harassment complaint, rumors were started about every male I spoke to in the office. After going to lunch with a male coworker and running into my boss, soon the entire company thought I was pregnant with the coworker’s baby. I received congratulations from people I had never met before, received gifts of parenting books and baby formula sent to my home address. No matter what I did I could not escape it.

 I began to drop weight quite quickly. In one month’s time I lost almost 20lbs and the doctors were at a loss as to why. I tried to apply for jobs in other departments but struggled to even get interviews and was never offered a position. I also applied for jobs outside the company, going as far as trying places like Starbucks. However, the state of the economy and my health proved to be obstacles I couldn't overcome. I finally felt my only choice left was to seek help outside of the company. I tried to file complaints with the Missouri Department of Labor and the EEOC but seemed to be passed around from person to person, so I hired an attorney. I could hardly afford the attorney with the mounting medical bills, but I had to fight back in order to save my sanity and my health. My attorney filed the claims with the Department of Labor and the EEOC after giving the company a chance to "settle". They, of course, denied any wrong doing and a government investigation began.

The investigation ultimately proved that what they were doing was extremely unethical but since I couldn't prove who was doing most of the harassing and a lot of it came down to he-said-she-said there was nothing they could do as it wasn't illegal. I did however score a few minor victories in that I had a few emails in writing showing the company was at least aware of the harassment, which they had swore in their statements to the EEOC that they were not. The investigator gave me a writ to file a civil suit against the company and told me, off the record, that she believed everything I was claiming and was appalled at the actions of the company and wished she could do more for me. I discussed a civil suit with my attorney; based on my health and financial situation we both agreed I would not be able to handle it or even win.

Before the investigation was finalized, my best friend suggested seeing if my doctor would allow me to take a two week leave of absence to see if that much rest would allow me to recover. Since all of my doctors were aware of the situation I was in at work, it took no time at all to get the request made and approved. I was still loosing weight, I was hardly keeping food down at all even with the help of anti-nausea medications, and I began having sharp stabbing stomach pain after eating. The two weeks allowed for time away from work to run tests and remove myself from that environment. By the end of the two weeks I was not any better, nor were there any answers about to why I continued to grow sicker and sicker. My doctors extended my leave of absence which led to short-term disability, long term disability and now permanent Social Security disability.

It took five months after the last day I worked for doctors to determine what the problem was. I went in for a hospital stay and an ERCP (I don't fully understand everything the procedure entails but they go down your throat similar to an endoscopy, examine your pancreas and if need be place stints, like mini straws, into your bile or pancreatic ducts.) After the procedure, my doctor informed me I was also suffering from gallstones and would need my gallbladder removed immediately. Since an ERCP is an inpatient procedure I had my gallbladder out the next day, and the day after that they removed the stints from my bile ducts. It was then that I finally began to recover, but I would never go back to work.

I obviously don't have gallbladder problems anymore but to this day, in stressful situations, my pancreas flares up; I get sharp stomach pain, I begin to loose weight, and I am unable to keep food down. It's as if my body has endured all the stress it could take. I have taken great strides to better manage my stress. I saw a stress management counselor, continued to stay on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications and do my best to remove myself from stressful situations when at all possible. I am still hopeful that someday I will be better able to manage stress without such harsh physical repercussions and reenter the work world, at a different company of course.

Not to end this on such a mushy note, but there are at least a few good things that came out of this situation. One, is that I was able to get out of the company, even if it was not exactly in the way I was planning. Two, I was able to get disability and now have the time and resources to focus on taking care of myself. And three, I am not as passive aggressive as I used to be. I learned to stand up for myself and speak my mind because if you don't do it for yourself no one else is going to be there to do it for you.