imjustjurking

I've not been paralyzed but I've been recovering from an illness that left me mostly bed bound and now I'm only mostly housebound for the last couple years. I'm really worried about returning to work and answering these kinds of questions!

Did you find people were mostly nice or was it kind of a mixed reaction?

Thank you for taking the time to write that.

I have noticed changes to my personality, I'm a lot less tolerant to things now than I used to be and I don't really like that about myself. I find it a challenge sometimes to listen to people complain about minor irritations that they can easily solve when I can't really do much about my situation or the things that I am doing take a really long time to have any impact.

On the other hand I have a new found respect for taking a slower pace and enjoying little things, I used to run around all the time but now I'm pretty happy to hang out with anyone and just chat without having to do anything.

I have a really good support network, my friends and family have been great but I do worry about getting sort of emotionally burnt out when I return to working. I used to be a lot more extroverted, I find excuses to take breathers away from people now when they are over because it can be a little overwhelming after a while. I don't know if that will improve after more exposure to people more consistently? If your discomfort faded then maybe mine will as well, it improved a bit with getting cats! I think having other things around to keep me company has been good.

I'm glad you've made such a good recovery!

I guess luckily (?) I was already disabled before I got sick so I have had some experience with these attitudes before, I had reduced hours at work and sometimes people would make snide comments (even though there were lots of mums on reduced hours) or they would try and be sympathetic and compare a headache with my chronic pain... I appreciate that you're trying but that's not how this works!

I think my concern is being off for so long that I will be useless or people might not want to risk employing me (I've had previous managers tell me that they wouldn't have hired me if they had known the extent of my health issues). But I'm still not anywhere near ready to return to work yet anyway, I just had surgery on Monday so who knows how long until I can get a job again!