I wanted to share this, because reality is life goes on ..despite CFS. What do you do when life demands that you step up, regardless of the toll it takes on you?

So the last 3 months of crashing was precipitated by work and prolonged by work.

Been working for some time to head off a staffing crisis, trying to get some changes made. Turned out to be too little too late and 4 of 6 staff members resigned back-to-back.

This at a time when I had just been given two new units to manage. Lost key staff from one of the new units as well.

So here I was with multiple businesses to run and no staff to run them. I had to be doing intensive recruitment, reallocating where I could, managing irate clients and stepping in personally to enusre the ship kept afloat.

An important client betrayed me by recruiting my key resource just as I was wrapping up her project, greatly inhibiting my ability to complete (and thus get paid).

Then we compound the situation with emotional betrayal of a departing staff member. He was sick for 2 weeks and got a touch of what it is like to try to function when you can't concentrate, can't make sense of what you are reading, are tired and in pain all the time ...

He went to my boss and planted the seed that perhaps I could not effectively manage my job because of my illness. That perhaps I was not consistent in my communications (not calling me a liar directly) because maybe the memory issues associated with my illness caused me to misrepresent certain situations ... Can we talk about MAJOR STRESS. I work so hard to compensate for working with CFS and my personal integrity is sooo important.

What was worse is that my boss actually called me on it. All hell was breaking loose, corporate was investigating the high turnover, the stuff was hitting the fan .. and I was left standing squarely in front of it.

Did I mention how long and hard I worked to avoid all this madness, did I mention it could have been avoided, did I mention that the cog in the wheel was totally out of my hands?!?

Thankfully I have the habit of sending emails so I was able to ask .. would you like me to pull the email trail? So my boss backed down, but the damage was done...

Of course I started crashing ..4 days one week, 2 days the next, 11 days...

Of course I felt the crashes coming long before they hit. I had many conversations with my boss aimed at implementing mitigation measures. Nothing was done until the storm hit .. at which point my reliability and hence my ability to do my job was brought into question.

I WANTED TO QUIT MY JOB SO BADLY! But I couldn't.

Toss in a couple of bum naturopaths, thousands of dollars wasted and my boss's repeated references to the docs saying my issues are pyschosomatic (I really told my boss waaay too much about my illness).

Add a touch of professional insecurty as my boss tried to replace me with someone not even vaguely, remotely close to being qualified to do my job.

My world was falling apart, but I still had to be a mother, I still had to be a manager and I had to get throught it. So I hunkered down, took it one day at a time and got through it.. sometimes barely conscious..but I got through it.

The waters are calmer now, I am still bruised, a bit more bitter, a bit less trusting. I now know I have to watch my back more, I have to be careful who I speak to about my illness and how much I reveal. And I have to work much harder to manage the impact my illness has on my job. I am a lot more worn out physcially, emotionally and financially .. but still standing.

That's life for you .. as CFSers we do our best to avoid the storms, but sometimes the storms come to you .. and you have no choice but to go right through the center.

I guess a positive is .. I'm still resilient. More feeble than I was before..but still a survivor deep down inside. My confidence was badly shaken in the past few months, but I have done a good job ..despite CFS.

I think i need a good 2 years of rest after this...