u/One_Fisherman_2046

I had a hysterectomy for endometriosis in 2023. The OB rushed me into it and no patient education was done, for the surgery or the PF issues that followed. I had had some urine leakage from overactive bladder and 2 kids but it was controlled with meds. Now, even with meds it’s still not great.

I’ve seen a PFPT and was diagnosed with a hypertonic PF. No prolapses. She was nice and very insightful but out of network so I had stop seeing her. I have my symptoms as under control as they can be, making sure I am not constipated (INSANE levels of pain with that), on my OAB meds, wearing pantiliners, and I’ve quit my teaching job that had me on my feet on hard concrete all the time.

I did buy a home program from Dr. Bri a year or so ago but have been so burnt out and sick from chronic stress from work I didnt do it. It’s on my to do list now that I have a new job. My OB and GP and urologist all are pushing me to do PFPT. But even with this more flexible job, I can’t be using all my PTO to go once a week for PT and I’d have to because it goes past my one hour flex time and I’d have to leave work regularly on a new job. I can’t find any clinics that do late or weekend appointments that arent out of network.

Has anyone had success “DIYing” it? It sounds to me a lot of it is breath work, stretching, managing stress, diet changes, and the like. I have a wand but I don’t really need it? I went straight back in to teaching after I had my hysterectomy so I never really have had a time with the hypertonic floor where I wasn’t teaching so now that I’m remote working I’m hoping it will help?

I’ve had chronic illness all my life but they have grown in number as I age (37) and complexity. I’m a mom of 2, married to a very supportive man thankfully, and I have always been a headstrong, go-getter independent person. I’m the planner, the leader, I’m the CEO of my life and family. It’s just my personality.

But this past year, August to now, I’ve hit a point where I just can’t anymore. And it was odd because while I had hit that wall, where my job and the way our lives were was not okay anymore. I taught high school for 8 years and while that’s not when the chronic stress or illness began it was amplified and worsened by it. Last August, my husband and I decided this would be my last year. But while I hit that wall and the signs were clear of me getting sicker, I couldn’t quit. We needed money to pay doctors visits and meds. Kids were enrolled in the school by my employment. I needed time to figure out what to do. I still had to push through, as hard as I could.

I’ve got CFS among other things. I’m up to 6-7 illnesses or issues now. I was hitting PEM every weekend instead of every long break at best, every day at worst. But the adrenaline of starting a new work week pushed it back. I fell asleep at my desk with students actively in my classroom. I was mortified.

I did manage to get out of teaching and God answered every one of my prayers. I got a full time remote job with flexible hours with a significant pay raise and excellent benefits that I start mid July.

It’s been a lifetime of pushing through and now I’m here. And I don’t necessarily have to anymore and I don’t know what to do with that. I find myself continuing to push through anyway just out of habit. Like today. Today was a good day, I had more energy and was happy about getting my home office set up. Which led me to cleaning the whole house to have a good, clean reset. I got 75% of the way through before I crashed and had to stop.

I’m really struggling with reprogramming my brain to not need to push through things. Whether it’s getting my work done as fast as possible because my brain things I still have a class coming in in 5 minutes, or cleaning, or going out of the house somewhere even though I don’t want to. I know a lot of this takes time, for my nervous system to step down out of alert mode. But me continuing to push myself past my limits because it’s what I’m used to isn’t helping to reach that goal.

How did you come to terms with limitation? I know everyone here experiences this in some form. For people who are or have been people that feel or have to push through illness, where and how do you define limits? How do we comfortably and healthily protect those limits when we ourselves are the first ones to shatter those boundaries?

I am interested in learning about the different things people do to take care of themselves that is not related to prescription meds.

I’ve been diagnosed with Hashis since 2017. It’s like playing whack-a-mole. Up, down, all around. I know a lot of it is stress which I have had to go NC with my family for and change job fields for. So, less stress is on the docket.

I already supplement with vitamin D, B12, and magnesium. I have many other chronic illnesses so some of it overlaps. Heating pads, hot baths, ice packs and caps, water, trying to eat regularly, etc.

What do you do to make your life better? To make yourself more comfortable or to get through your day?

I taught high school English for 8 years. When people talk about teaching being stressful, you really have no idea until you do it. Like, it’s barely something you can describe. I have other chronic illnesses beyond IBS and this was my last year. I couldn’t do it anymore. But I had to work through the year to have money to continue treatment and prepare my pivot.

So I managed to make it work. I resigned from teaching and have gotten a fulltime remote job. It’s such a blessing. I thought when I quit that I would have this dramatic decrease in symptoms and pain but that hasn’t been the case. If anything, it’s gotten worse. I’m currently making rounds with my doctors to check everything.

When I was working, I took MiraLAX and drank as much water as I could. I have IBS-M and my GI is pretty hands off with treatment, he doesn’t believe in M. I drank my coffee slowly enough at work that it didn’t cause problems. That pattern let me go to the bathroom every other day-ish. I have pelvic floor dysfunction so I CANNOT get constipated. It is insanely painful. When in doubt, if I had a big cup of coffee as fast as I could on the weekend, I’d get a great movement.

But since I’ve stopped working, my gut is so confused. I’ve been drinking coffee as quick as I can, sometimes more than cup to try to get a movement, and nothing. The Miralax is working fine, I’m very gurgly and bubbly and the small amounts of stool I do get are soft. But there’s just no “push” really. I know some of it could be the pelvic floor dysfunction but a lot of the time, I don’t even really get an urge to go. I just do just in case.

I’m going every 3-4 days now, it’s still soft, but no real schedule anymore. And no big urges which I’ve read could be because of the MiraLAX making things too soft. Hard for the colon to tell something is there. But the usual culprits of gas, bloating, discomfort, etc. Tried magnesium hydroxide last night and no reaction. I try to avoid senna or other stimulants if I can.

I do have a bottle of Linzess but my GI pretty much threw it at me via MyChart with no follow up. I know I need a new doctor but he’s low on my priority list right now.

Any ideas whats up? Everything I read said the chronic stress and pain should’ve slowed my gut. But it was more or less fine while working. Now my stress is way down and while I am more sedentary right now, I have to be to recover from the rest of the chronic illness issues. It’s something I plan to work on in the next few weeks. I don’t get why my gut seems to be backwards from what literature suggests.

What hacks are you guys using for cleaning?

Since I’ve had a flare recently I haven’t been doing as much cleaning. My family is so used to me being high functioning and pushing through that they don’t get me being down for the count so they don’t do it either. So that’s part of this battle, making them realize I shouldn’t have to direct them. My husband is supportive but he’s been absorbed in these woodworking projects and isn’t paying attention to the house.

Additionally, I’ve gotten to a point with my health that I am officially having to concede certain things and not push through. I just can’t bounce back like I used to. But I don’t want to completely lose my agency. It is MY house after all.

I just swept the floors and I am exhausted. It needs mopping something terrible but I just can’t anymore. Hacks for that? Besides family labor? Are there any specific life hacks that work for you? Not meds or anything just different ways of doing things that help?

I was a high school teacher for 8 years until I finally hit a wall and could no longer do the job. I spent the last year pivoting and managed to secure a very lucrative fulltime remote job.

Ive been poring over WFH subs to see what people recommend and I bought an ergonomic chair, sit to stand desk, anti-fatigue mats, etc today. I’m also getting an adjustable external monitor for my laptop.

Im still working getting diagnoses but I’m fairly certain my primary illnesses are CFS/ME, idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) with simultaneous chronic migraines, IBS, Hashimoto’s, endometriosis, and others. Being remote will help a lot but there are gaps I’m trying to fill.

Aside from what I’ve already bought and my usual go tos of meds, implements like my ice and heat packs, topicals, etc., what else can I do to make working from home the best it can be?

Any specific products or things I can do?

I posted a few days ago about my favorite job boards I used recently to find my new remote, full time instructional design job. I see so many posts about users saying they feel trapped, they can’t get out, etc. I wanted to make another post to explain how I did my pivot to maybe help some people get a foothold into a new path out.

First, you aren’t trapped. I know it feels like it. I certainly felt that way too. I think what helped spur me on was my health. I had hit a wall and just could not do it anymore. My husband and I decided before August that this was my last year. I couldn’t quit immediately, we needed the money and my kids’ enrollments were tied to my employment. For me, this is absolutely an element of religion to this, I couldn’t have walked this path without God’s help. I did all the work but He opened the doors. There’s no other way to describe what happened.

I decided in August I was going for instructional design. You have to decide on a path. Especially in this market, you cannot spray your resume and pray. You’ve got to get specific and drill down on what you want. Using Ed Skip’s board, you can see a lot of the popular job fields teachers go into if you don’t know what to do yet.

I spent from August to November learning all I could about ID. I followed Tim Slade and Devlin Peck religiously, watched all their videos, joined their online communities. The learning principles I already knew, I just didn’t know the fancy ID names for them. Adult learning principles are barely different from child. I took notes in a big spiral notebook, cross referencing different ID resources from IDs in the field and universities. All free. I didn’t pay for anything.

From December to March, I designed 3 “corporate” eLearning courses and created all their documentation like action maps, storyboards, process write ups, etc. I learned Articulate Rise and Storyline. All of this went well. I had one major crash out over Storyline triggers but after screenshotting myself doing it, I figured it was just me doing it wrong, lol. I created my online portfolio with these courses, documentation, and explanations plus my assessment suite I’d designed and pulled data from for 3 years from my work at school. I used Squarespace.

From March to my offer in June, I did at least 5 job applications per day. Sometimes more if there were good hits that day. I used my planning period and at night and weekends. I interviewed with 3 companies. My new employer required 4 levels of interviews. It still took several weeks before I got an offer.

One thing I see a lot of people talking about is they still have a “teacher” resume. Unless you are planning to stay in K12, you MUST change the language and terminology on your resume. Whatever you want your new job title to be, that’s what it needs to be on your resume. I changed all of my job titles to represent something ID-adjacent or outright ID. It’s not a lie because I did do those ID things at that school. Pick out what you want to highlight. Teaching is like 80 jobs in one. There is no way to include all we do in 5 bullet points. So pull out what is relevant to the job you’re applying for. Claude.ai was super helpful for this for me. I gave it a job description and my resume and we worked to get it in ID corporate language. It asks great reflective questions and helped me pull out things from ten years ago I didn’t even realize were ID related.

Your resume should highlight how you can do the job you want to apply to. Recruiters spend on average 6 seconds on a resume. Don’t expect them to translate your experience into what they want because they just won’t. Your resume goes in the trash. Spell it out for them directly. Use keywords from the job description. Like writing in English classes: “answer the question by restating the question.”

If you want corporate or higher Ed, no more “students, parents, admin, lesson plans, etc.” Now it’s “learners, stakeholders, upper management, learning experiences, etc.” Also, if your bullet points simply state what job you did or what skill it was, you’ve got to revamp.

Bullet points should follow the formula of “skill or activity + metric to prove that/provide scale + effect or problem solved.”

Example: “Designed a full assessment suite for two learning cohorts based on performance gap data which raised average proficiency rates from 65 to 80% since 2024 after iterative reflection and development.”

In K12 language, this tells them I made my own assessment suite for two grade levels, which I did because of performance gaps in their knowledge, and after going through the iterative process (observe, fix, reassess, etc), since 2024 I was able to raise their proficiency on these assessments from 65 to 80%.

To a corporation, this means I know how to take performance gap data, why employees aren’t performing correctly on something like nurses not properly disposing of needles after giving patients shots, and develop learning/training or assessments to address that problem, observe the data (Kirkpatrick model), and then either fix the training to do better, or it shows proficiency and meets the company’s overall goal of nurses properly disposing of needles. Iteration means you just go through this process over and over. Nothing should ever be perfect. As teachers we iterate constantly.

Look at what you’ve done as a teacher. Does your experience lean more toward ID and curriculum design? Or maybe you’re an Ed tech pioneer and would love to help districts roll out new platforms? Or you want to do online teaching? Maybe you have experience in graphic design or similar and could design product for a company?

See what you have first before trying to go back to school for another degree. In my recent job hunt, it doesn’t seem to matter what your degree is in just so long as you have one. I have a BA in English and a Masters of Library Science yet I got an ID job. LinkedIn has learning courses you can take but honestly, most of the tech have free trials. I built my portfolio off of Articulate’s free trial, no money needed. Save paying for something you really need a lot of guidance in.

And through my timeline, you saw that I was doing all of this during the school year. It wasn’t fun, I won’t lie, and I also had gallbladder surgery in October so that threw my timeline off a bit and I had to hustle in November. But it did work. It just sucked. I was essentially doing two full time jobs and taking care of my kids. But I think the fact that I had it planned out and knew what milestones I wanted to reach and when helped keep me on track and not lose sight of what I needed to do.

This post is not to glorify myself because this would not have happened if God wasn’t on my side. I still can’t wrap my head around this new company I’m working for actually wanting me when I know there are more experienced people out there. But this is clearly what He wants me to be doing.

I just want to help and hopefully this reaches someone and inspires them to make the change because if you felt like I did last year, I know you need it desperately and you deserve it.

Good luck to everyone and this market is brutal so just be patient and consistent.

I’m seeing tons of posts about people struggling to find a job. This is, unfortunately, a pretty common thing these days because the market right now is not in your favor. I just wrapped up months of job hunting and it is definitely an employer’s market.

You should be prepared for it take a long time. Thankfully, mine did not but I was prepared for it to be the case the way social media is blowing up.

To help out, I wanted to share two job boards that I feel are really high quality, are moderated heavily so you don’t get scam garbage like LinkedIn, and have great filtering capabilities. I will recommend to stay away from Indeed, Glassdoor, or Simply Hired. They’ve really gone downhill recently and in months I only found one single decent lead. LinkedIn is hit or miss. If you’re willing to sift through the mess, you might find some decent things.

But I highly recommend Skip Ed. This was made by Chelsea Maude Everett who is a former teacher. She and her staff personally comb through REMOTE job postings specifically tailored to teachers trying to get out and that are a minimum of $60k and posts them on Saturdays. You can sign up for her newsletter to be notified. It does cost a small amount of money to get full access to the database but honestly, I didn’t even care. I just chalked it up to an investment of my new journey. I think I got 3 months for $20 something?

It has great filtering for things like any travel required, full or part time, type of job (common pivots for teachers), a slider to adjust salary, etc.

I also recommend Hiring.cafe. They have a subreddit too. There are even more filters available for this. Down to if you DO have to travel, how much are you willing to do through flight? Through car? Through boat? They also have a specific setting that filters out dead, ghost, or scam jobs and you can report to them bad jobs you find. I’ve found jobs through this board I didn’t see ANYWHERE else. I want to say I found my new job through here.

I hope this helps someone.

Anyone struggling with post-teaching illness? My brain seems to think I'm still there.

I taught high school for 8 years. These last 3 years were really hard and this last year just about did me in. I've always said I had chronic illnesses and for some things I do but thinking back to when I first started teaching, when my girls were toddlers, I still didn't feel like this. Even teaching full time pregnant right up to delivery was never like this.

I think we're all familiar with the "let down" sickness that comes on long breaks. I was starting to experience that every Saturday toward the end of this year. I had decided back in August that this was my last year. I had to work this past year to get my next steps lined up, which has been profitable and I start a new remote job July 13.

I knew this "let down" illness would hit me during the summer but God, I feel so bad. My body is so tired and sick but my mind is running a million miles a minute. I had a MRI the other day and prior MRIs I was able to fall asleep in with my zen-out breathing technique but this one? My brain was like a dragonfly. Just zipping all over the place. I had to remind myself to physically breathe in.

I cannot seem to calm down while being simultaneously so exhausted, fatigued, sleepy, etc. My blood pressure had been climbing all year but was still normal enough no doctor felt it was a problem. Doctor appointment this week has it at 147/77. My top number has always been right at 100. My OB wants me to change to a progesterone-only birth control to help this (and other things).

I know all the things to do to get out of burn out: rest/sleep well, eat well, exercise, less screen time, etc.

But all that is long game. I don't know what to do to feel better NOW, in the very second, minute, hour of the day. I know this can take months or even a year or longer. And while I am going to see my GP in two weeks, there's not much anyone can do. Healing from all the chronic stress and anxiety will just take time.

But there's no real diagnosis, no real treatment plan. Just, get away and try to live better, and wait.

Anyone else here?