Depression and Career

Lately, I have become more open to sharing my story of my illness to some colleagues and friends who I think are open-minded and understanding. There's one common question I got from my different circles of friends, "Good thing your job did not get affected." The thing is, it did affect my job. Big time.

When I started taking my medicines, I did not know what to expect for the side effects. My former doctor did not really warn me. Good thing my mom is a pharmacist and she researched on the medicine. There were many listed side effects. But which of those would affect me, we did not know yet.

Yawning was one funny side effect of the medicine. I would yawn at the unlikely time of the day. I would yawn when I was not really feeling sleepy. I would yawn, yawn, and yawn. Yawn at the average of 10 times in one hour. It was so unusual that I felt my facial muscles really feeling stretched out. It had the kind of muscle pain that anyone would feel after some stretching. 

The worse effect came out in my teaching. There were many times I'd pause in the middle of a lecture because I'd suddenly feel dazed - like my mind is going to hibernate. I would stutter and get really lost for words and even ideas because my mind would slow down, and eventually freeze. Those times, I thought it was just me. There was just something wrong about me. But in retrospect and now that my body has adjusted to the medicine, I learned that it was all because of the medicine.

Right now, I would still have those side effects. But my body and mind seemed to have adjusted already. I learned the best time to take the medicine so it wouldn't have its bad effects during my teaching. I learned to listen to my body and give what my body says. If my body would feel really sleepy, I'll give her sleep. If I feel like I could not really drive, then I wouldn't drive.

The illness should not be taken lightly when choosing or managing a career.