Info for work colleagues....???

gemmarh100

Hi, I have RA and have been working full time...but going part time this Sept, due to RA pain and tiredness... :roll:

I work as a Nursery Assistant with small children and love my job. The people I work with are lovely but I find it hard to explain RA, why sometimes I am ok, and other times I seem to need a lot more support.

Any tips on how to educate my work colleagues so they don't think I'm putting it on...or trying to get out of worse duties... :?: I have tried to find fact-sheets or info for people around me, but can't seem to find anything :?: Any links would be great....

Thanx

Gem xxx

elnafinn

Any good?

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/wpress/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

Elna x

elnafinn

Google "The Gorilla in Your House" (by batsgirl). This may help.

The link is ok when I look for it, but not for some reason when I transfer it here. :?

Elna x

DebbieT

The Spoon Theory



Many people with a lot of different invisible illnesses, not just Fibro,struggle to explain to the people around them just how difficult a normal day can be.

This was the problem faced by Christine Miserandino (now Christine Donato) when a close college friend asked her what it was really like to live with Lupus, when sitting in the college diner one evening. This was a friend who had seen Christine on bad days as well as good, but who knew enough to know that she didn't really understand what it was like to have a chronic illness day in and day out.

In a moment of inspiration, Christine came up with the idea of representing her limited amount of energy in units of spoons and asked her friend to describe what she did on a normal day. Breaking down each task into its individual parts, and taking away a spoon for every task done, helped show her friend that these tasks, that healthy people take for granted as being easy, could be a huge use of limited energy for someone with a chronic illness.

Christine explained that "the difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn’t have to. The healthy have the luxury of a life without choices, a gift most people take for granted."

The story of this explanation became known as 'The Spoon Theory' and is a central part of the community Christine has built up for other people with invisible illnesses at butyoudontlooksick.com. The Spoon Theory is now loved by thousands of people worldwide, not only as a way of explaining to their own friends and family how difficult normal tasks can become, but also because the essay shows that someone else truly understands what it can be like to live with a chronic invisible illness.

x

DebbieT

The Gorilla in Your House


Acquiring a disability is a bit like getting home to find there's a gorilla in your house. You contact the approved and official channels to get rid of infestations of wild animals (in this case, the NHS) and they umm and aah and suck air in through their teeth before saying something roughly equivalent to "what you've got 'ere, mate, is a gorilla, and there ain't really a lot what we can do about them, see..." before sending you back home to the gorilla's waiting arms.



The gorilla in your house will cause problems in every part of your life. Your spouse may decide that (s)he can't deal with the gorilla, and leave. Your boss may get upset that you've brought the gorilla to work with you and it's disrupting your colleagues, who don't know how to deal with gorillas. You're arriving for work wearing a suit the gorilla has slept on. Some days you don't turn up at all because at the last minute, the gorilla has decided to barricade you into the bathroom or sit on you so you can't get out of bed. Your friends will get cheesed off because when you see them - which isn't often, because they don't want to come to your house for fear of the gorilla and the gorilla won't always let you out - your only topic of conversation is this darn gorilla and the devastation it is causing.



There are three major approaches to the gorilla in your house.



One is to ignore it and hope it goes away. This is unlikely to work. A 300-lb gorilla will sleep where he likes, and if that's on top of you, it will have an effect on you.



Another is to try and force the gorilla out, wrestling constantly with it, spending all your time fighting it. This is often a losing battle. Some choose to give all their money to people who will come and wave crystals at the gorilla, from a safe distance of course. This also tends to be a losing battle. However, every so often, one in a hundred gorillas will get bored and wander off. The crystal-wavers and gorilla-wrestlers will claim victory, and tell the media that it's a massive breakthrough in gorilla-control, and that the 99 other gorilla-wrestlers just aren't doing it right due to sloppy thinking or lack of committment. The 99 other gorilla-wrestlers won't have the time or energy to argue.



I have known people spend the best years of their life and tens of thousands of pounds trying to force their gorillas to go away. The tragedy is that even if it does wander off for a while, they won't get their pre-gorilla lives back. They'll be older, skint, exhausted, and constantly afraid that the gorilla may well come back.



The third way to deal with the gorilla in your house is to accept it, tame it, and make it part of your life. Figure out a way to calm your gorilla down. Teach it how to sit still until you are able to take it places with you without it making a scene. Find out how to equip your home with gorilla-friendly furnishings and appliances. Negotiate with your boss about ways to accomodate, or even make use of, your gorilla. Meet other people who live with gorillas and enjoy having something in common, and share gorilla-taming tips.



People get really upset about this and throw around accusations of "giving up" and "not even trying". They even suggest that you enjoy having a gorilla around because of the attention it gets you (while ignoring the massive pile of steaming gorilla-turds in your bedroom every morning and night, not to mention your weekly bill for bananas). The best way to deal with these people is to smile and remind yourself that one day, they too will have a gorilla in their house.

X

dreamdaisy

I'm not clever enough to do the blue stuff but I am sure that AC will have a 'user friendly' leaflet that you can access. People can read the facts and general information about arthritis but still not quite 'get it' - I know that from personal experience. DD