The mental health therapy provider that had previously gone bankrupt has recently got their act together and merged with a larger organisation. Now that those issues are out of the way, I resumed my place on their waiting list. Today marks the start of the burnout therapy program with them. In my mind, I was scheduled to have my first session at 10 am this morning, so I had set my alarm for 9 am before going to bed last night. When I awoke this morning, I went through my routine list of iPhone checks and activities as I normally do. These include checking for message notifications, e-mail notifications, product sales notifications, social media notifications, playing a game of speed chess (I have a 450-day streak going), checking the BBC News app to see what’s happening in the world, and so on. I checked my calendar and found that the 10 am therapy session was actually for tomorrow. Doh! There was a session scheduled for today, but that wasn’t until 3 pm.
I decided to pop into the shower. I was about 5 minutes in, with a head and face full of shampoo suds, when I came over in a blind panic. It suddenly dawned on me I’d neglected to let someone know I was having a shower. This is significant, because there’s only a finite amount of hot water in the hot water reservoir. Normally, taking a shower means having to flick a switch in the downstairs hallway to turn on the gas water heater. The slow loss of heat coming out of the shower head confirmed I was now in a sudden and frantic race against time. As luck would have it, I managed to wash all the suds away before the last remnants of heat were exhausted, but only just. Suffice it to say the tail end of my shower was rather fresher than I had planned.
Now, I love my brother and sister-in-law (technically, they’re not married, but who cares), but they do have their own way of living and thinking, which can take some getting used to. They are both frugal, environmentally conscious, and very mindful about fresh food and healthy living. In many ways, they remind me of Tom & Barbara (aka Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal from the British sitcom The Good Life). By comparison, it sometimes feels like they make Tom and Barbara seem like ostentatious, squandering gluttons.
Whenever I’m here, I try my best to ‘fit in’ by joining them in their lifestyles as much as practical. I eat what they eat, when they eat, etc. Those who know me, and my waistline in particular, will perhaps recognise that’s a necessary ‘adjustment’ on my part. When I went out to do some blackberry picking yesterday, I seized the opportunity to sneak one of the packets of chocolate buttons I picked up from Tesco with John the other day. I had been hiding these in the fridge, tucked deliberately out of sight behind other things. I don’t know whether it was the clandestine nature of it, but it was an indulgence I particularly enjoyed as I was meandering around the village. When I came back with the berries, I snuck in through the back door and made sure to dispose of the ‘evidence’ deep into the kitchen bin. I thought I was safe.
When I came down to breakfast this morning, John and Lisa were pottering around the garden, so I took my place at the kitchen table, as I normally do. And then, a wave of guilt and shame, admittedly tinged with a healthy dose of humour, overcame me as my eyes widened. There before me, sitting on my laptop and secured in a ‘plastic evidence bag’, was my previously discarded empty chocolate buttons wrapper. Across it were the words “Powys Police Evidence.” For all my clandestine efforts, I was exposed. We all had a good laugh at it, of course.
It being the first day of the week, I brought out my stash of vitamins, hay fever and other tablets to replenish my now empty tablet organiser. None of the tablets I currently take are strictly necessary. More accurately, nothing serious is going to happen if I don’t take these particular tablets. Still, it’s a good habit to keep things organised.
We decided Lisa and I would head out for a drive today. I was keen to explore whether I could drive up the hill that’s visible from the back garden. Google Earth does show there are some road tracks, but it turns out these are on inaccessible private property. Instead, Lisa offered to take me to a picturesque lake a few hills farther away. When I asked John where I could go today, he simply answered with “Away!”, which brought us all to tears of laughter. In our family, a good ribbing opportunity rarely goes unclaimed.
There was time for a quick round of LIJONG before we left, but just as we were getting ready for that, there was a knock at the door. As an unexpected bonus, Lisa’s aunt, uncle and cousin happened to be on holiday not far from here and popped in to say hello. It’s rare to have so many people here at the same time, and we enjoyed getting to know each other for an hour.
We squeezed the next round of LIJONG in after the guests departed before Lisa and I set off to explore the nearby Llyn Du. It turns out there are multiple lakes in Wales called Llyn Du. It translates simply to Black Lake, taking on the common observation of the lake’s appearance to the locals through time.
After driving for around 10 minutes, we parked off to the side of one of the numerous narrow lanes that crisscross this region, then walked 10 minutes through hills of grazing sheep to find the lake. If you didn’t know it was there, it would be hard to find. It was a pleasant and relatively easy hike, with some stunning views along the way as well as at the destination. You don’t have to go far in this part of the world to find truly stunning vistas as far as the eye can see. Wales is truly beautiful.
Even though it was only a short hike, it was long enough up and down the hillsides to put it at the threshold of what my body could comfortably tolerate. The blistering summer heat was also partly to blame.
After bleating back at various sheep in the distance and snapping some lovely shots, including some amazing panoramas, we made our way back to the car and meandered slowly back through the lanes from whence we came. Driving fast is not only ill-advised down these quaint country lanes barely wide enough for a single vehicle, but doing so serves no purpose other than to deprive you of some spectacular views, so we plodded along slowly. Lisa and I spotted a section of lane that was sporting a dense stretch of brambles with an abundance of ripe blackberries. This is akin to the same sort of sixth sense you get while on safari in Africa. After a while, you learn to spot things others might simply overlook. We stopped for a few minutes and filled up another container. Lisa, the poor thing, lost her footing and fell into the thicket at one point, catching a shinful of stinging nettles in the process. Ouch! We made a mental note of the location, just in case we decide to return with bigger containers…and some antihistamine.
Back home, I was ready for another shower. I wasn’t too worried about insufficient hot water this time, as a cool shower was definitely the order of the moment after the afternoon’s exertions. However, I was slightly less prepared for the sudden and immediate loss of hot water as a direct result of John deliberately pestering me by opening one of the downstairs taps. I think my exclamation of “Agghhhhh! You BASTARD!” may have been heard as far away as Cardiff.
Having refreshed myself with a shower, I settled behind the laptop in the upstairs crafts room for my therapy session. I initially thought I was late due to a misunderstanding about the time difference, but I was eventually an hour and a half early. When the session finally started, he had problems with his video, so it ended up being an audio call only. Worse still, the therapist hadn’t yet been fully briefed on the changes they wanted to make to my therapy program to accommodate the new Parkinson’s diagnosis. As if to rub salt into that wound, he then announced he would be on a 3-week holiday after next week. Sigh. We agreed to cap the session at just half an hour, choosing to add more time to future in-person sessions. That way, he would also have time to consult with the rest of their team.
The mental health therapy program as it currently stands is already tenuous at best. Between me, the company doctor and the health care provider, we have collectively struggled to come up with a solid statement of what we want to achieve. Before the Parkinson’s diagnosis, my success criteria were that I returned to work and my tremor was suitably addressed. That at least had the merit of being clear and unambiguous. However, the situation has since changed, and now it’s not so clear-cut. In IT parlance, what’s missing is the definition of done. The absence of a solid and unambiguous definition of done is often the principal reason why any given IT project or initiative fails. If you don’t know where you are going, how do you know whether you’ve arrived, or whether you took the right route?
I didn’t see the burnout coming, but I did eventually come to terms with being ill and needing help. Eight months on, I feel much better. Am I healed? Or am I deluding myself? The company doctor has expressed concerns about me falling back into the same thought and behaviour patterns that would lead me right back to another burnout. That would benefit neither me nor my employer. The problem is that I’m not the best judge of these things. If I’ve learned anything at all from this whole burnout situation, it’s that I’m the last person to recognise the signals my body sends me. One of my gripes with the mental healthcare profession is that it tends to rely on what input you provide. I’d much rather submit to the professional opinion of those who know and understand this subject matter far more than I ever will. I wish someone would simply tell me what to do, rather than ask whether I still need help.
The length of my sick leave may soon have real financial consequences. In my first 52 weeks of sick leave, I benefit from 100% of my income. In the second 52 weeks, that reduces to 70%, or 80% if I’m working at least some hours. I can’t really complain, since that level of social welfare is likely considerably more than I could hope to expect from other countries I’ve lived in.
There’s also the question of whether I will be certified to work again at all. The company doctor wants to first see how I respond to the levodopa. I could respond well, and I’ll be allowed back to work. My income then simply picks up where it left off. Financially, everything is fine and dandy in that case. That’s until the Parkinson’s interferes with my ability to work in the future, which it eventually will, such is the nature of Parkinson’s. At that point the entire 104-week sick leave cycle kicks in again.
If I don’t respond well to the levodopa, I don’t really know what will happen. If I’m still off sick after week 104, I will then inherit another status under the Dutch employment law. Technically, my current employment contract will be terminated, and I will start to receive state benefits. Ordinarily, my current income would reduce meaningfully at that point. Fortunately, my employer has a type of gap insurance that covers the delta between what I currently earn and what the state would pay me in benefits at that point. In theory, that means my current income level wouldn’t significantly drop. However, this all depends on whether I’m signed off for 100% or not, the order in which certain events take place, and a plethora of Dutch employment law technicalities, making it hard to predict the future with any degree of certainty. I just want the whole thing to come to some sort of final status. The problem then becomes, what kind of quality of life will I have when that point is reached? I genuinely don’t know, and that’s more frustrating than having Parkinson’s.