u/hotdogwater3600

Hey All,

As the title says, starting in two weeks I’m taking 12 weeks of leave for mental health reasons. I work for the biggest lab company in the US as a float phlebotomist. I’ve been with the company for coming up on 2 years. After countless weeks pulling 55 hours, being put in unsafe situations and being told to deal with it, and generally just being taken advantage of, I’ve had enough.

It’s gotten to the point where I go to bed anxious every night anticipating a call at 5am telling me to travel to a site to work by myself and see 80+ patients in a day. I do not make enough money to deal with this bullshit. I am seriously disappointed with my company and I others the field in general. I cannot believe I allowed this treatment to happen to me for nearly 2 years and accepted it because I genuinely thought I would not be able to get a better paying job in the field.

I hope this leave will allow me to work on my mental health and figure out what my next steps are. I may have to leave the field entirely.

Anyone out there that is putting up with unacceptable treatment from your company, you have more options than you think. Have a great summer everyone.

About 7 months ago, for the first time in my life I took action to help myself with binge eating disorder. I was tired of feeling helpless and facing the guilt and shame after every binge. I started a GLP-1 and then about two months ago also started vyvanse. For the first 4 months on the GLP-1 I treated it like it was a magic cure, like it would just curb my appetite and I’d also lose all the weight. No surprise when neither of those things happened. In late January I decided to get serious and stayed tracking all of my food and trying to stay in a deficit. I had some success and was able to lose 20 pounds in about 3 months.

In the past month I also got a personal trainer that I see twice a week, as well as walking about 2 miles a day around my neighborhood. In the past month since becoming more active.. my eating has reverted back to binging. So far I have not gained any weight.. but I haven’t lost any either. It feels so crushing to feel this way again after I’ve been consistently showing up for myself and trying to do all the right things. About a week and a half ago I stopped tracking food after a binge because I was too embarrassed to add everything up.. and I haven’t been able to track anything since. It feels like I’m being active for “nothing” because I’m just eating back all the calories I burn, even though I know that I exercising will always be beneficial and never for nothing.

I think I’m going to try to get over myself tomorrow and start tracking my food again. Maybe I need to lighten up a little bit on my deficit for the time being.

Thanks for listening.