26. Tribulations and Trials

Period: March 2014 - April 2014

Just a few days before my notice period came to an end I landed the perfect job that it ticked all the boxes -.it was in Human Resources, it was some distance away so I would be more motivated to move out of Mum's and, best of all, I would be working largely on my own, so less stress about interacting with others. I finally felt like the tide was turning in my direction. It was nice to recognise optimism in my thoughts again, which made me hope that the old me was slowly returning. What's more, for so long I had been unable to think about the future because it brought about a lot of fear and anxiety, but I now found myself capable of looking ahead and seeing some blue sky at last.

The plan was to settle in to the job before moving closer within a few months. As my new job was about 30-miles away I was delighted I had invested in a car. I had purchased it from a dealership, to be more confident there wouldn't be any nasty surprises, and if there was it would come with a short warranty. Unfortunately, in my optimism I had forgotten that many car dealers are unscrupulous thieves who would sell a death-trap to their grandmother. On the journey from the dealership back in February, the oil light and "stop" warning lights had started flashing whenever I slowed for a junction of traffic lights. As I was about 5 miles away from work  and 20-miles from the garage - and the vehicle had supposedly just undergone a full safety inspection - I continued my journey and called the dealership as soon as I arrived at work. You have no idea how much I regret not rejecting the car there an then, but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

They seemed fairly relaxed about it on the phone and told me it was fine to drive and I arranged to take it up for a repair the following week. This solved the problem for a few weeks, then it started happening again intermittently before slowly getting worse. By this time I had started my new job and it wasn't so easy to get the car to the dealership, which was 25-miles away from my house in a totally different direction to work. Nevertheless, I wasted another Saturday taking the car back, only to return for my keys to be told they had simply added "oil stabiliser" and still couldn't tell me what the problem was!!!

In the meantime, during the first two weeks of my new job I was scheduled to have my Infliximab infusion, I also had an appointment with the gastroenterologist; an appointment with the gynaecologist to check on the state of my cervix again, and an appointment with the councillor! I ended up cancelling the appointment with the gastroenterologist because I couldn't bear to ask for so much time off.