Aneirin
Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006 From: Tamaris Status: offline
|
I am off work due to long term illness, I have depressive issues for which I am taking medication. The medication is such that it prevents me from doing the only job I am qualified for, that of a lifting equipment engineer, the health warning on the drugs I take says do not operate heavy machinery, drive or be engaged in work where danger of death or injury is a possibility. My job involved me testing and certifying lifting equipment including man riding equipment safe for use, and myself inspecting lifting equipment in use. Yes, I used to scale tower cranes and walk out onto the boom to inspect the pulleys and bearings, all that for 16K per annum and myself being heavily in debt. My redundancy came when due to my condition I point blank refused to carry on with my job for a real fear that I will miss something that would result in the death or injury of others. I was he only lifting engineer for a hundred miles and the company I was with had a problem, do they demand a person with black depression on medication to do their job or do the decent thing and let them go and there find a replacement. The company chose the former, my redundancy was not a surprise and to be very fair, via redundancy I was at once able to access the benefits I needed so that I had the chance to calm down. If it had been the latter, then perhaps I might not be here now, for the thoughts that came when walking out on those booms more than fifteen storeys high. The things that I did then, the thoughts I remember thinking and the feelings I had, now scares me at how close I came for it would have been all too easy to take a wrong step and fall off a boom, or worse cause a situation that meant death or severe injury to others. The medication I am on I feel has altered my body chemistry, because now though largely the depression has subsided, I cannot sanely survive longer than three days without the medication, for the symptoms of withdrawal I know too well, they I feel have become another problem that needs investigaion and with that the fear that the condition now created might need another untested but fit for human consumption drug to counter the problems created and with that more drug problems ad finitum.
_____________________________
Everything we are is the result of what we have thought, the mind is everything, what we think, we become - Guatama Buddha Conservatism is distrust of people tempered by fear - William Gladstone
|