What Happened - Part Two

Here goes with Part Two of the story:

Insomnia.  Ever heard of it?  If you are menopausal, or even peri-menopausal, you probably have.  It's part of life for many people, I believe I inherited a tendency to it from my mother, and it got worse when I hit my late 40s, early 50s.  I think my mistake was believing it was something I had to learn to live with, instead of something I had to actively work against.

By the time I wound up in hospital, I had been losing 2-3 hours of sleep for up to 10 nights a month for a couple of years.  I would wake up in the night, and then my washing-machine mind would start churning.  It was almost always about work, or stuff I had to do.  And after learning from coaching that I needed to work harder, and losing a couple of assistants in short order, I got the bright idea that if I was up in the night anyway, I might as well go to the computer and work.  Bad idea.

When Vlad died I had a lot of insomnia (just as I had had when my mother in law died years before), and with all the health problems I was having, the doctor put me on sleeping pills which I took for a short time.  When a random stranger told me I was having sleep problems, and I learned that part of fibromyalgia is a sleep disorder, I started really working at sleeping by exercising in the morning, going to bed early, and most importantly, making myself stop my washing-machine mind through prayer and meditation and telling myself I was going back to sleep.  It worked, but I had to be very strict with myself.  No getting out of bed!  No ruminating!

When I went back to work in December 2014, I had just started on hormones and was not feeling a whole lot better.  I mean, I got my sleep back, so that was good, and I was exercising every day, so my heart felt better.  I still had headache and fibromyalgia issues, and I still had the cognitive issues (aka brain fog) which are part of fibromyalgia.  One reason I went back to work was because I didn't know if I would ever feel better and if I wasn't going to get better I wanted to stretch my sick leave for as long as possible.  So I went to work 3 hours a day in December and 5 hours a day in January.  I found out what it was like to be home in the afternoon, and I found out what it was like to say, "no, I can't make that meeting, go ahead and schedule it without me."

I told my boss I was not sure about my future in my job.  I took back most of my job but I didn't teach and I didn't work in the evenings or early mornings (like I had done for a decade).  That relates to another cause of the changes in my life - the kids.  Everyone thinks little kids are the hardest, but little kids go to bed, and if you are lucky, at least a few nights a week, you can count on your brain still being awake when they go to sleep.  But all of a sudden I was going to bed early and my kids were going to bed later, and working at night started to seem less and less attractive or possible. 

In February, I went back to work sort of full time (my old at the office schedule, without the evening and early morning and middle of the night hours).  And that week my boss was terminated.  I had spent two and half years learning the best ways to work with him, and I had a lot of respect for his vision.  But now he was leaving.  They say when you get a new boss, not only does your boss get a new job, you get a new job. 

It became immediately apparent that my goals for my time and what my job needed were not going to be compatible.  My new boss was in New York, which meant meetings that started at 4 pm Israel time, exactly the hour I was trying to be home for my kids.  My boss who was leaving had done the fundraising solicitations - I wanted to do them, but that too required phone work in the late afternoons and evenings. 

I did what everyone recommends - look for a job when you have a job, it's easier to find one that way.  I went on some interviews and some informational interviews.  These clarified a few things for me.  And I also realized something - I could not walk out of a job I had held for 14 years and walk right into something else.  I needed time to say goodbye, and I wanted a break.  After losing both my in-laws, I wanted my kids to see their grandparents.  I wanted to see my aunts and uncles.  I saw how many family members Alen had lost in a short time, and I imagined what the next decade might be like in my extended family.  I wanted to put these things first, now, while they are possible.

So, I made a plan to give two months notice and to take my kids for six weeks with their grandparents and a week in London to see my aunt and uncle.  My last day of work was a Thursday.  On Sunday, Gabi graduated from 6th grade and on Monday I was on a plane with the two kids. 

That's part two.  Time for bed.  There will be a part three, and who knows how many more???? 

What Happened - Part 1

Because it's been a year of incredible change, and because there has to be a time when I stop, and look back, and put some form on the story, make it a narrative and have, not closure but a vantage point, I've been feeling the need to write this post.  For friends and family and people who might learn something from it that they want to learn, but mostly for me.

I decided the story should really begin about two and a half years ago in the spring of 2013 when two things happened - I became set to be the "last man standing" of a three person team that had run my workplace for a decade, and that same week I got the opportunity to receive free coaching from someone who was training to be a coach.  My coaching goal was to put myself in the best possible position to succeed with the changes that were happening at my work.

A few things stand out from the coaching, which was on the whole enjoyable and inspiring.  One was that my coach had me make a list of what I loved about my job.  It filled a page, and when I read it to him, he said there were probably few people on earth who loved their jobs as much.  The other was that he had me track my time from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed on two full days.  In this, I discovered that I spent almost no time speaking to my partner or doing anything with her.  Like less than 10 minutes of each day was being devoted to the person I love and have committed my life to.

I asked my coach about work/life balance and he admitted he had yet to figure that one out.  He was a workaholic who stayed up late a lot trying to find more hours in the day.  I figured that probably wouldn't work for me, but took his advice to work harder.  I forgot that a 50 something man and a 50 something woman don't live in the same physiological universe.

That was May 2013 and in the months that followed I tried to internalize what I had learned, while coping with external circumstances.  I tried to force myself out of the office at 3 pm two days a week (it worked for about 8 weeks maybe) to make my partner happy, and at the same time to deal with a ridiculous level of turnover in support staff.  I had some wonderful student interns that year and I continued to work hard and be hopeful of success.

In the summer of 2014 we had a war, my father in law Vlad became ill, and I took only a short vacation.  After the vacation, Alen went to see her father, I came home with the kids, and our boss put us on a new project management system, Asana.  With this, I was going to organize my entire world.  I made lists of home projects and work projects, assigned tasks to my colleagues and was sure I had things under control.  I also had a lingering infection and over Sukkot developed sudden shoulder and chest pain, high blood pressure, intense headaches, and the anxiety that one would have in such a situation.

After going back and forth to the emergency room a few times and a short hospital stay, my heart checked out and they said, "stress."  I said, "What do you mean, stress is my middle name, I have lived like this for years."  Right up until menopause, that is.

My mother told me that regular exercise was the key to stopping the menopause related heart irregularities that run in our family (my sister got them just a bit after me).  While I was in hospital we adopted a dog and from the day I got out I have walked every day.  This walking slowly changed my life completely.

When I got out of the hospital I stayed home for a week like they told me, and when I got back to work my boss asked me if I needed to take some time off and I was like, "I just did."  But by then Vlad was in hospital in Trinidad and  after I was back at work for a week, Alen called me at work and said she had to fly out.  She got on a plane with Gabi, who insisted on seeing her grandfather, and they were at Vlad's bedside the day he died, which was one year ago.  I was here with Sasha and the dog, not sleeping, and with a headache that lasted 6-8 weeks (finally turning out to be an atypical migraine brought on by, you guessed it, menopause).

I stayed out of work for a month and thought a lot about my father in law.  The best years of his life were the last ones, when he lived with his son and his family, saw his grandchildren every day, went sailing with his sons, cooked meals and listened to his favorite music.  I thought about what could be learned from his life and about what it really means to put family first.  I doubted whether I could continue to be the person I had been at work.  One of the scariest parts of my illness was losing my ability for complex thinking and handling complex tasks.  I could not teach and if someone wanted to talk about something complicated I had to ask them to write it down.

Over the course of these week of trying to provide emotional support to my family, grieving, medical appointments, receiving tons of support from the community, and learning to take care of myself, I lost my desire to help other people with their problems.  It just disappeared.  For years I had been the go-to person, priding myself that I would try to help every single person who walked into my office with whatever they needed, and suddenly I just didn't want to do it any more.  It was startling, and it was real.

And now I have to go grocery shopping, so stay tuned for part two of the story!