3 years ago, I was a very busy software engineer. I had written, from scratch, numerous projects that saved the company I was working for a lot of money.
Before coming to Beckett, I was on my mother’s health insurance and was being treated for Opioid Use Disorder with Suboxone. Once I was hired into Beckett, after 3 months with a temporary agency, the health insurance switched over to theirs.
The entire time I was employed by them during 1st shift, I had to leave a half hour early every 2 weeks to go take a drug test.
During COVID, I was offered, by them, to work remotely. During this time something happened to me that the neither the doctors nor government will acknowledge. I was able to work effectively remotely. My cell phone was given out to colleagues on both first and second shift to be able to reach me. If a machine broke down during 2nd shift, I was willing to come into the building to help get them running. I lived about 5 minutes away at this time. But I was in a state of constant fatigue.
I started sleeping 14+ hours a day. I would sleep 8-10 hours, get up and work, and then when work was over, I would sleep for another 4 hours, and still not feel like I had enough sleep. I talked to my doctor about this and she suggested it was work shift sleep disorder and offered no medication. She basically told me to power through it.
When I was called back into work, I initially came in, but I remember getting up and showering one morning and feeling so fatigued I just started crying. I remember thinking no one should have to deal with this kind of fatigue. Around this same time, the tops of both of my legs went numb, and on my left leg, I would feel a shooting pain going from the top of my thigh through my hip into my side when I would wake up after sleeping on my back.
I had always been a side sleeper, but all of a sudden, I would find myself waking up on my back, every day.
Every single day that I woke up, I would feel a fog similar to when you wake up during REM sleep that wouldn’t go away for 3-4 hours. Normally the fog from waking up during REM sleep goes away within 15-20 minutes. Even after showering and getting to my desk at work, I would start to nod out. I started drinking an inhuman amount of coffee so that I could be productive while I was at work.
I started stubbing my toe, often. So often, in fact, that I had ripped my big toenail nearly down to the root on both feet. Years later, that still isn’t fully healed. It was like my foot wasn’t going where I imagined it was supposed to go. I could no longer trust my autopilot. To this day, I have to be hyper-vigilant when walking around.
When I was working from home, it was much easier to make it to my desk in the office and stay there and force myself to work. I was getting more work done inside my house.
The same staff who played favorites in the company took a dislike to me. Certain employees were allowed to work remotely full-time, but I was treated like I was suddenly being lazy expecting to just sit back and collect a check. At no point would my conscious allow that. No one inside the company ever sat down and reviewed my work. I did all the work I did expecting them to eventually recognize what I was doing by myself.
Every time I asked for a period of remote work, I was given the OK. There would be times where it was easier to make it into work and be productive. Then there would be nearly an equal period where no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t able to be at work.
2 years before I was fired, my Christmas bonus was withheld on the basis of not completing enough work. Except, during that period, I completed the biggest project I had done for the company. The company just decided not to use it. The employee who worked on it with me was re-assigned to the same location I was sent to and he unfortunately died. That employee sat next to me, and we talked the last business day before he passed away.
Just 2 months before having the next biggest project I had done for the company completed, my boss fired me via voicemail. He explained how he was going to contract my projects out to another company, pay them 2-3 times what I was making and wash his hands of me. What a wonderful place to work. I wasted the best years of my life at this company expecting them to actually be what they advertised themselves to be. They left me without health insurance, likely expecting me to die from the garbage that was on the streets at the time.
I persevered. I didn’t touch opiates from the streets. When my doctor told me that he couldn’t see me anymore because I didn’t have the money for a urine test until the following week, I made it off the strips I saved up while decreasing from 8mg to 4mg. During the period after that, I further decreased from 4mg to 2mg. By time I ran out of strips, I went to MetroHealth to continue my treatment. I was treated as if I had been using heroin from the streets. After being supplied 1 month of 2mg strips, I was told by a doctor to go to a walk-in clinic without insurance. I ended up in the emergency room multiple times due to Suboxone withdrawal. Then, against my will, I was put on 4mg again. My doctor seems to think this has fixed everything and I’m all good to work now. Unfortunately, nothing has changed. The constant fatigue still plagues me. I can barely conjure the energy to get in the car to drive my partner to her jobs so she doesn’t go through the same thing I went through.