Sad :(

Life can be so unfair :(

I took this week off work to 'recover' from my latest exacerbation of asthma. I didn't feel that I needed to take so much time off. Begrudingly, I'll admit it looks like it was needed as my peak flows have only just started to pick up. Now I have the evidence that my respiratory nurse was right all along, I probably have been going back to work too soon after previous hospital admissions. This in itself is ok.
One of the main reasons I've been so unwilling to take extra time off work is due to the fact that a few years ago I took some time off work, then wasn't allowed to go back! This lasted 21 months!! I'm still not back in my original nursing role, I had to compromise and move into an office based role just to be allowed back to work.

So, against my better judgement I take this week off sick and make it clear that I'll be returning to work next Monday. Today I had an appointment with my GP to get a sick note to cover the time I've been off and to say I'm fit to return to work. All fine. Today I speak to my manager on the phone who informs me that she doesn't want me to return to work on Monday as I'm a risk to her department, she has to think about her staff, there are a few members of staff who are traumatised after what happened! She was really 'off' with me too, like I've done something wrong. So I'm now on special leave until I am reviewed by Occupational Health and get cleared by them. I don't get on with my Occupational Health department, it seems all they want to do is cause me problems and stop me from working. Seriously, you wouldn't believe how hard it can be to convince people to let me go to work!

Anyway, back to what has seriously annoyed me. Traumatise people?!?!?! Yeah, let's remember who this has happened to - ME. Once again, I am lucky to be alive. Now it's hardly MY fault that the ambulance couldn't find me. It's not MY fault that people who had no reason to be in the same room as me where wandering in to watch the show of me having a respiratory arrest. It's not MY fault that this even happened!
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure seeing a colleague, and in some cases a friend, deteriorate so rapidly and go into respiratory arrest is not fun. I'm sure it upset a few people, but come on, traumatise them 2 weeks later after the incident? Don't you just love it when people play on a situation that has absolutely nothing to do with them?

Not being allowed back to work has nothing to do with my health, there is no dispute that I'm not well enough to return. It's purely about the effect that me being there has on other people. I don't rely on other people to help me. The people I did ask for help were qualified nurses who knew exactly what they had to do. If the ambulance hadn't have got lost I probably wouldn't have even gotten to the point of resp. arrest, and if I had, I would have been somewhere safe (ambulance or ED).

I sincerely hope this gets resolved soon, but thanks to this, next time I am work and start to feel poorly I'll feel unable to ask anyone for help incase I 'traumatise' them.

I'm so upset and angry. Being at home for too much time on my own has a tendancy to make me feel down anyway so I wasn't in the best of moods before this all happened. Now I keep crying, it feels like I'm constantly fighting and I've had enough :(