I met up with a fellow Ambassador and good friend. We were having a day full of the New York Christmas experience. We sat down for lunch and quickly caught up on all the things. Family, friends, the holidays, what was coming up and what we have been up to. One topic that came up and that we had a deep conversation about was working. Both being hard workers who love to work, we talked about how after suffering an aneurysm, work, and how that changes, is something that is not talked about much.
As I have gotten older, work has become a challenge. I went from being someone who always worked two or three jobs, to someone who now has a challenging time getting through most days. I often think to myself that it should be easier ten years after my aneurysm, but as those ten years go by, I get older, and things are not as easy as they used to be.
I worked for a long time at a middle/high school, but retail was something I had always done, up until recently. One thing I found out while working at a new retail job was that I simply cannot do this anymore. It made me sad to think that the one thing I always had to fall back on, that I enjoyed and was good at, was now something of the past. I loved being active and on my feet all day and doing physical work. Working crazy, long hours and just being part of a group. Now that has all changed. I find I get brain fog more quickly trying to keep up with everything going on around me, it is harder and takes longer to learn the register, which I once excelled at. The crowds of people and noise, along with the music playing in the store and an earpiece for the walkie talkie with all the extra chatter in my ear, made it extremely hard to concentrate. Not having an extra number of brakes and the constant moving were suddenly too much for me to manage.
Things that once came so easily to me, that took me no time to do, the craziness and the noise that never bothered me, suddenly became the enemy. I also did not understand why I would do this to myself again. Put myself in this position, thinking I could do it, knowing fully, I could not. But, when you need work to pay the bills, and when work is something, you love to do, sometimes we push ourselves beyond our limits.
I am lucky to be one of those who are open about their aneurysm and do not mind talking about it. I had let my store manager know that I would need to write everything down, it may take me a bunch of times to do something before I catch on, and I would ask a lot of questions. I am also lucky that I know myself and I know when something does not feel right. I called my manager and let her know that I just couldn’t do the job the way I had intended to, and it wouldn’t be fair to her, my co-workers and myself if I stayed on and in the end just made it harder for everyone else. She commended me for being honest and for knowing my limitations and what was working and what was not and for being true to myself and speaking up when I needed.
It is sad to lose this part of myself, to try and understand where to go from here. It is also scary not knowing what my next job will be, how I will live, and for how long I will be able to work. When you have your whole career planned out and now you have to take a different course, it is hard to know what you will do next, be next. Finding work after having an aneurysm or going back to work looks completely different from what it used to. Even changing the way, you work all together, now, I try to find freelance jobs so I can work from home, but even those are hard to find. Knowing it is hard for me to do, I continue to apply to retail jobs, just for the security of knowing that there will be a steady paycheck and a place to go to everyday. To feel like I am doing something and making a difference. Like myself, other survivors are on their own, there is no spouse, partner or family that can help at that moment. It becomes scary when you are not working or not working as much as you would like or used to.
Just like the one my friend and I had, there needs to be more conversations about work after an aneurysm. There needs to be more resources so that survivors know what to do, how to proceed after. There needs to be more open and honest conversations with the people we work with and for, about how things have changed and what our new limits now look like. I am grateful for the small part time jobs I have now that allow me a small income and look forward to seeing what the future has in store for me as far as a new career path.
