Glenn K's Blog

Just a bit off track...

2011-01-22T06:36:00.002-05:00

Image by jacob earl via FlickrIt's 5:30 am, I find that my old routine, pre-cancer, is pretty much back. I am now for the most part back in shape. Mind you I never was really in shape. I am looking at myself quite differently now. It has been one year since my cancer free diagnosis. I would say up until about 6 weeks that my body has returned to a human state. There is very slight muscle and bone stuff but that could be age. I feel like I lost a year and a half of life. The biggest change that has taken place of course has been my new job. During the time I was diagnosed I was quite actively trying to get myself out of the hell hole I was in. It is at times such as these that my belief in fate resurfaces. Ironically my belief in god has changed considerably. I call myself a bit of a freak since usually during times of the struggle I recently had when one comes out a winner their faith in god is usually stronger and the phrase "closer to god" is frequently heard. In my case, and please forgive me but I have grown more cynical and having walked in the garden of death, mostly from the thrombosis, my faith finds the words "what kind of god does this to people" comes to mind. I've heard the response "to make me stronger" which I think is a really sick joke. If I wanted to restore my faith in god I know the starting point would be that he has a huge sense of humor with sadistic tendencies. That thought simply causes my stomach to roll. I hadn't intended to write about god when I started writing this but there it is. Where do I find peace? In simply believing that when we go there is nothing. That thought I think comes from being so heavily sedated with drugs and never seeing any light or sign when I was literally surrounded in darkness. From being "out cold" enough times that my brain has functioned to its most possible minimum but still able to register that it has machinery to still run. Thinking that there is absolutely nothing once were done brings me peace. That's how I deal. I accept it. One of my cancer mentors is currently in the hospital in Edmonton. She has battled cancer for 20 plus years. Her husband writes in her blog to keep her followers up to date. She is facing hospice care by mid week. I'm angry, helpless, and angry. Did I mention angry? She has inspired countless cancer victims, and when I read her blog I am touched beyond words. During the times when my struggles were at their height and I was camped out in the bathroom most of the time, this lady, this angel, cheered me from a distance and it worked. How could I bury my head when this lady who has faced so many battles is fighting with me. I couldn't and wouldn't let her down. Human kindness is my god. I worked in hospice many years ago when I first came to Montreal, and to this day when I hear the word hospice the immediate word that comes to mind is death. I so want this lady to win. I believe in miracles and so badly want for one right now. In reading her blog during the Xmas holidays it had vividly brought back the memories of my own Xmas the previous year when I had 14 chemo treatments under my belt and only two more to go. She was undoubtedly struggling with the side effects of her chemo and all the classic signs were there, but for those around her she kept going, as tired as she was she wanted to be with her family. As sick as she was she did it. Exhausted as she was she fought through it. I don't know if exhaustion won out but suddenly just like that a panic button was struck and she is where she is now. Lucid I understand and losing touch with each day. We are being told that she is comfortable. There was a time when I took comfort in those words but this time not so much. I want her to win. I've always leaned towards the underdog in any bet. I know I'm hopeless but my heart always wins out and I refuse to accept logic. I realize as a write this though that there is no logic....and there's that anger again. I am restless now in between her blog posts. I am somewhat like her before she was rushed to the hospital. Frustrated with the unknowing and still wanting to know more. I can't ask for any favors from you know who either. I'm flipping the switch now ....I've lost all my words but I will continue to keep the faith and hope a miracle will pass. God doesn't make miracles people do.

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A new beginning...

2010-12-12T08:48:00.001-05:00

Image by Christopher Chan via FlickrSometimes I find life can be so amazing. After winning my cancer battle and getting back to work I found myself quite down. When I returned to work I got hit with quite a few obstacles, but not the kind I had expected. Prior to getting sick I was so engaged in my work I went a very long time ignoring the signs that I was sick. I became so tired I could no longer avoid the trip to the doctor. All along I was telling myself that it was because of the stress I was under but eventually it all caught up with me. When I received my cancer diagnosis I blamed my job for getting sick. I'll be clear, I made decisions to ignore the signs and engage myself so heavily but in all my years of working I have never seen people treated so badly in a workplace. Recently I received a call from a company in Toronto soliciting me for employment. The salary was quite a bit lower and after some discussion over the job I told them the salary was too low. They asked me what I would consider and I told them. The recruiter went back to his drawing table and came back with another offer. While he was at the table I brought up the location of the employer as I remember that my industry is generally located outside Montreal and is better accessed with a car. It turned out I was right but they came back with a nod on the salary and I thought, hey we came this far, the timing was right why not at least check it out. An interview was set up and I found myself on the trek. During the travel I kept telling myself I don't think I want to make this kind of journey everyday. While I was sitting in the foyer waiting for the operations manager an anglophone lady was at her desk in the reception on a personal call. She wasn't talking in a discreet tone but her discussion went into how she was having difficulty getting one of her work tools replaced but her boss wasn't moving on the issue as they had agreed. (flag ) After she hung up the phone she asked me to keep what I heard between myself and her. In my head I was kind of laughing at the thought that communicating her message somehow had moved up the ladder in my head of priorities. I passed two hours in the interview and at certain points it had seemed they had made up there minds that they wanted me but were trying to refrain from displaying it. Now, for me the major part of my life has been a bucket of shit being thrown at me in just about every direction. During this process everything was going my way but I kept telling myself something is wrong or something smells a bit fishy and I was looking for it. Due to timing my travel on my way back home turned out to be much longer then the trek going and I had made up my mind. I felt guilty because these guys had really rolled out the red carpet for their presentation. My friend Louise called of course called to see how the interview went and when I told her she thought everything had sounded really good but I kept having this gut feeling that something was not right. ( I was used to the shit fan pointed in my direction so things going my way threw me off guard and I was looking at the full picture in a distorted way. ) Part of me wanted to be cowardly and just not respond but they were so nice to me I gathered up the courage to write them and tell them that I was just not willing to do the travel although I thanked them for an awesome interview and said I could see myself thriving in the post but I was declining their offer. I figured the deal was done, sit back and be patient another offer will come to get me out of the hell hole I'm in just wait. To my surprise I got a letter back with a travel itinerary showing me the bus times, connections and total amount of time it would take for me to travel along with an offer to cover the cost for the bus transportation outside the Montreal area. I had to rethink. Besides the itchy feeling this was all too good to be true something had to be wrong and I wasn't aware of it, I was still mixed on the travel although it was pointed out I was looking at a max of 45 minutes from home to being at my desk. I went back with a counter offer for more money thinking they will say no for sure and this will put me off the hook. In the mean time I was getting calls at home from my current employer who wanted me to travel to Toronto on a special assignment work presentation to negotiate a new contract/customer. My stress levels have to be managed well now that I'm a cancer survivor and my immune system is damaged. Stress as we know attacks your immune system at the get go. I felt like I was in the twilight zone with my employer, the request they were making was outrageous, my job is in a call center and my compensation to be involved at such a high level was not enough to take up the challenge. I asked for compensation for the increased responsibility/ travel and they flatly refused and also refused to offer me time back for my personal time taken for the travel. I've been in business for over 25 years I know how this works but because this company had so royally screwed me upon my return to work including a lower salary I did not want to go. Trust me if I was working in a company that took care of its employees I would have pounced at this opportunity and gladly have jumped on board. This request to travel to Toronto found me back in my pre-cancer world of feeling overwhelmed and outraged at my companies demand without willingness to bend and compensate me for my involvement. But they were not taking no for an answer even after I told them hey this is my first week back to work full time and I'm on strict instructions from my doctor to be getting plenty of rest and avoiding stress. In the mean time there was a small eruption amongst my co-workers that I found myself in the center of and some not so nice things were being said about me behind my back. There was a huge neon sign with an arrow pointing up staring directly at me but believe it or not I was still not looking at the big picture. Next I received a call from a VP in Toronto for the new company that was looking to hire me. (seems they were considering my counter offer for a higher salary) The gentleman had a very warm and inviting voice and wanted to discuss his companies offer. He basically re-stated everything that was covered in my interview and in my head I told myself Glenn this is not bullshit. These guys are for real. The team I would be working with are a lay back group, work hard but they try to keep a light atmosphere. Not what I'm used to at all!! After the phone call they had successfully won me over and I was committing myself to a new life. I can't recall ever going on a job interview where such a display of they really want my employ was displayed. Prior to getting sick with Cancer I was actively seeking employment elsewhere but it just wasn't happening for me. Had a job change taken place I would have lost the group insurance coverage that took care of me while sick and the playing field I was on would have been very much different and financial strain would have been difficult to cope with.

A new chapter in my life is about to begin. It is always darkest before the dawn and I do hope I am making the right decision. It would be nice to put all of the crappy past I've been dealing with behind me and to move forward with a clean plate. I am not facing the New Year ahead with the same challenges I had last year. I think that this is my time!!

Life goes on...

2010-12-04T08:09:00.004-05:00

Image by Stuck in Customs via FlickrIts been a bit since I've written but getting back to work and back into the pandemonium of daily living hasn't left me much time. Still a bit draggy but its coming along, the only real dragging symptom I have is the arthritic bone, and muscle stiffness, and numb fingers which seems to come linger for a while and then dissipate. At times it lingers so long and gets frustrating so I take something for it.
My work, I don't even know where to begin. When I became sick the reason why my cancer was so advanced was because I was ignoring them due to job demands and stress. Since I've been back I've been slapped around quite a bit with issues. When my department went from 30 to 7 my responsibilities shifted and I went back to being a helpdesk agent from incident management. The role I had was a highly active one and there were a lot of demands and stress that I enjoyed. Now I sit at my desk and can sometimes wait up to 45 minutes before I get a call. I like to be busy and enjoy when the day goes by and I'm not looking at a clock. Also I am pretty my chained to my desk with the responsibility of answering the phone and cannot get up and move around too much. This doesn't help with regards to the muscle stiffness I get left over from chemotherapy. When I did get back to work I trained two days and was back at my desk. Prior to being sick I worked as an agent for not quite three months. I did pretty good considering. Thank goodness I had the gradual return or I wouldn't have been able to cope. Besides adjusting to getting back to the job I had my company, that makes billions of dollars a year hit me with an insurance premium bill for now is about 700.00. My pay did not get processed for one week, the insurance company made a mistake and overpaid me which had to be paid back, my salary was decreased and at the moment they are asking me to fly off to Toronto to do be a part of a sales pitch as a representative in French. They want me to work Thursday head to the airport on Thursday night, work all day Friday and catch a plane back to Montreal on Friday night, cover my expenses etc. I swear I'm in the twilight zone. When I returned to work the operations have changed drastically. I had computer problems network connection issues and my computer would freeze in the middle of my calls. Apparently this was so everyone could have internet access. Remember I work for an IT company....my desk computer cannot even run to the capacity I need to do my job. I can tolerate crap but once that runs out I tend to be quite sharp. I wrote to my head office HR explaining that my workstation set up was unacceptable and I couldn't perform my job to their expectations with the tools provided. I don't have the problem anymore but cannot access things off the internet to do things like check my internal mail, complete my time sheet etc. This it seems I could do from home.....NOT! Friday when I went to work my boss was not in and as soon as I arrived a new employee approached to say that he was having workstation problems because I complained to HR that everyone in the office has internet accessibility and that I was jealous that people in the office had access and I didn't, and that he couldn't work properly . He was having the same problems I had when I started. I was not too happy that correspondence I had with my HR department went back to my co--workers either and that their workstation problems were because of me. We are six people. Only three people were in the office when I started so I did the math. I am the type of person that takes my job seriously. I couldn't give a flying fuck about internet I go to work every day to do just that not surf the net, I can do that home. I was clear about that in my communications to my boss and my HR department. There's a whole bunch more bullshit in this but I'm going on long enough.

Ya know, the last year and a half of my life was turned upside down, I lost a lot of my dignity and hair (that still bugs me when I think of it, couldn't bear having lady legs) and I was weakened to the point that preparing a meal was a big deal and eating it another. To fight through all that, reach the point where I'm ready to go back into life and take on new challenges, celebrate my health and then be surrounded by crap like this. To actually not feel welcome in my workplace where I spend 8 hours a day, keep my nose to the grind do my job, barely talk to people but remain professional is a hard pill to swallow. I don't get it. I responded to Friday's event, and its funny because this week marked my first week back to work full time and on my way to work I was happy and saying to myself "ya did it kid!" I actually took it upon myself to address those involved. This is what I sent: This morning is was brought to my attention that information regarding correspondence with HR in specific to having my workstation functioning properly was disclosed to the staff. As per our discussion in which I was very clear, my intent was to be able to come to work and have a properly running workstation with access to internal emails, and ultimatix (timesheet entry). Somehow the communication on the floor was that because I wrote to HR regarding this issue people were having internet restrictions placed on their workstations. What concerns me is that you were the only one included in my correspondence to HR regarding the proper set up of my workstation and this information was shared with a co-worker. I would like that this issue be clearly communicated to the staff that I had nothing to do with internet restrictions placed on peoples computers and that my correspondence with HR was to simply have my workstation set up to be able to work with all my tools. Again as I said to you I do not come to work to surf the internet my first priority is my work and to be able to work to my full capacity. In future I would ask that all communications that I have with HR department remain in the strictest of confidence.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet.

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Changes...

2010-10-15T09:01:00.001-04:00

Image by Michele Mondora via FlickrNow that I am back to work I am noticing several changes that have taken place. I have been out of the hustle and bustle of everyday life for a year and a half. While I was sick and intensely focused on my battle with cancer I watched as we experienced a global recession. My most impressionable memories of recession was back in the late 80's when I was working with the Royal Bank. When one works inside a bank during a recession one really gets to see the hard hitting impact to people during these times, its a unique experience. When I left my job last March to journey through my battle with cancer in my office approximately 25 people we laid off on the major portion of our project moved to India. I work for a large Indian consulting firm doing IT support for UPS. The building I work in is owned by another parenting company from India. There are two large buildings both beautifully landscaped, well taken care of with of peaceful view of the St. Lawrence River. During the two years that I have worked for this company I watched hundreds of people lose their jobs to relocation to India. Going back to work after being away a year and a half I see approximately 50 people in various departments in a building that can house probably 300 people. The first floor of the building is completely empty and there is a handful of people on the second floor spread out in a reasonably large work space. It is someone haunting to walk through the building now as there is no longer the sounds of a vibrant work place. When I went on my break this week another man had been laid off. I've had much change in my perspective having taken the course I did the last year and here is yet another shake up to my old comfortable life. It is devastating to realize now that we no longer work in a society that offers security in the work place. Large companies have taken advantage of the economic times and done large clean ups within their workplaces. In my twenties we looked for jobs that came with security and it was a major priority. Now days it appears as there is no such thing, security in the workforce is now a part of the past. I wonder at the people that I do work with and question myself how these people can take such risks in buying homes and cars. My head just can't wrap itself around this new way of doing things.
It appears now that opening your mouth to stand up for yourself in the workplace is no longer an option in fear of losing your job. In my twenty years of working in business I've worked for three very large companies, two of them banks. In the last bank I worked departments were being closed and jobs were being moved from Quebec to Ontario as a method of clean up. Some people remained with the company most moved on. What I don't understand is how in such difficult times our government can support bringing in people from other countries that are predominately replacing us in the workforce. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for immigration. What I see is a new trend. Spanish is now becoming a third predominant culture in Canada where this used to be a trend that was held by our American neighbours. In my small department of six half of are Spanish. It boggles my mind at what is happening and the changes that have taken place in our workplace from the influx of immigration. I've heard people say that Canadians have stopped having babies and that this trend is a way the government makes up in taxes. Its really scary shit.
There is a common knowledge amongst people that have been struck with cancer that we all experience a certain amount of isolation. I in particular have noticed upon my return to the workforce that although I am now cancer free that issues that I had before are no longer issues and my way of thinking is quite differently structured then most of those around me. I also found myself with an overwhelming sense of missing my family. My way of living has changed and I do have a strong sense of isolation that I'm working through. That and the "back to business" (cold) has left me in a bit of a state. I've been racking my brain to try and find something "new" to do with my time. I no longer have the urge to get out for a few drinks in the bars and even these places are skeleton in comparison to when the "no smoking" ban was implemented. Living in a French province as an anglo is also isolating. Many of my English acquaintances have disappeared from the scene I was so over indulged with. I have "one" best friend in my world now and thank goodness for that. I hope that I can find something soon to take my mind off the huge changes that have taken place so quickly over the last year and a half. I think I need another personal revolution.....NOT like the last one though!!!!

Glenn K's Blog

Just a bit off track...

A new beginning...

Life goes on...

Changes...

Discouraging...

Building Strenth

Back to work...

Countdown and other stuff....

Awakening!

Having a moment...my pointless blog?

Onward...2nd Oncology follow up.

A little better...

Little Angels...

Life Changes....

My Hero

Three Months Later

Snails Pace

Post Chemo Update

Motoring along at a moderate pace....

Feeling better...I love my pharmacist!

My most embarassing post...

Post Chemo Update

Energy and Attitude...

Cancer Free....

Glenn K's Blog: OK....So Now What ???