Are managing long-term health conditions and achieving meaningful career development mutually exclusive?

The short answer is no, but there is a much longer nuanced answer very much based on individual resilience, the support of your friends, and the quality of your employer. As a member CIH’s equality, diversity and inclusion steering group, I offered to tell my story.

Let me take you back to December 2011 to give you a bit of background

As a family, we had recently moved from North Wales to the Midlands to pursue career development opportunities. My daughter was reaching her second birthday, and I felt more or less recovered from the crippling post-natal depression I’d been plagued with for the first year of her life.

All was well – until it wasn’t.

My daughter developed epilepsy out of the blue. A vile, debilitating condition that saw her have up to 10 seizures a day, spending most of her pre-school years in a horrible, heart-breaking, unrelenting stupor – a side-effect of the medications and the seizures themselves. Alongside the anguish, horror, disbelief and tears, I experienced an unwelcome return to the world of antidepressants.

Fast forward two years, we had a glimmer of hope. The wonderful folks at Great Ormond Street Hospital agreed to assess our girl’s suitability for brain surgery. Big, scary brain surgery. We went through months of hellish, painful tests, until the day came when they gave us the go-ahead. 25 October 2014 was to be the day that the surgeons believed they could turn our lives around. And so, they did. With heart-soaring, life-changing, never-be-thankful-enough-to-you-amazing-people type of success. NO MORE SEZIURES. At all. She’s almost 11.

Was it time to taper off the antidepressants? Not a chance. Nine days before the brain surgery, I was sitting in an oncologist’s consulting room being told that, at the tender age of 35, I had a highly aggressive form of breast cancer, the deadliest kind. I gave short shrift to her suggestion that we postpone the brain surgery, spending the next few months in a haze of chemo, double mastectomies, millions of blood tests, and a five year old with a huge, healing scar on her head, finding and very much embracing the ‘terrible twos’ she missed out on first time round.

It was a massive relief to be told some 18 months later that I was free to exit the oncology service, never to be seen again. Except that I was seen again. Three months later to be precise, with three large tumours in my armpit – the cancer had spread. I remain on antidepressants to this day, experiencing periods of poor mental health, but on the whole, relatively stable. The cancer was treated, incredibly aggressively this time, causing awful, long-terms side-effects. Thankfully, I was finally told I was in remission in February this year.

So, what of work? And career development?

Some would have rightly decided not to work but to focus on getting through the uphill struggles – at home, quietly, reflectively. For me, that approach didn’t work. I was incredibly lucky to be working at Grand Union Housing Group at the time, and despite my chemo schedule and response to the treatment causing occasional chaos, they were fully supportive in letting me work as much as I could, or wanted to. There was no patronising attitude either. I wasn’t spared a heavy workload, or from taking responsibility when things didn’t go quite to plan – just what I needed.

I managed to achieve some career development success there too, whilst being treated – I went from being a housing manager for one of Grand Union’s subsidiaries, to taking on a wider housing and policy role for the group, a move which gave me lots of new challenges and opportunities to acquire new skills, allowing me to climb the ladder. Since then I’ve held two heads of service roles and have been assistant director of housing at the wonderful Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust since December 2019, a job that I absolutely adore.

So why aren’t long-term health conditions and career development mutually exclusive?

Firstly, it’s about resilience, a truckload of it. Resilience means different things to different people, but in the context of achieving career progressions while being treated for depression, anxiety and breast cancer, to me, it was rigorously making sure that the position was the right one – organisational fit, culture, location, physical demands, emotional demands… you name it, I considered it.

Secondly, I needed to ask myself what effect being knocked back would have on my mental health. Did I have the strength to shrug it off, or, even better, take something positive away from it? Could I afford a dip in my emotional state, and could such a dip affect my physical health? The answers came pretty quickly after I applied for a head of service role, turning up in a headscarf, with no eyebrows, upfront about my condition, smashing the interview, only to be told that I hadn’t advanced to the second stage, but ‘rest assured this has nothing to do with your diagnosis’. Yeah, right.

One of my key strengths is self-reflection. I am also my biggest critic. If I felt that I’d done really well, then really well was right. In answer to those questions, I absolutely did not have the energy to withstand such an affront, as I felt it to be at the time. I was furious, which turned into a profound sadness, zapping my physical and emotional energy.

In reality however, who in their right mind would offer a job to someone so obviously unwell, despite the fact that I felt great? I could have gone in a wig, but wigs itch. I mean they really, really itch – anyone ever seen ‘The Witches’? Yeah, it’s like that.

Resilience for me, in the quest for career development therefore, involved being very realistic, regardless of how painful such reality could be. Accepting the fact that people will almost certainly see the illness before the person, realistic about the fact that depression doesn’t need a headscarf, about the fact that learning from mistakes like this one was crucial to my personal growth, and, crucially, realistic about the fact that I was only ever going to be true to myself.

What of friends? What part did they play in helping me manage serious illnesses alongside progressing my career? The truth, however clichéd or corny, is that it wouldn’t have happened without them. I’ve already admitted to being my own harshest critic, and whilst I’ve generally found it to be a beneficial trait overall in carving out a successful career, it does need some balance. Without it you stand teetering on the edge of that stinking pit of self loathing – somewhere us depressives can often find ourselves wondering aimlessly towards.

Friends provided this balance, and still do. They helped me understand when something I’d done was actually pretty rubbish, in their beautiful, sarcastic, honest way; how to improve on that rubbish-ness, but crucially, help me realise when I’d done something good, great, or occasionally brilliant. This could be something as insignificant as baking a birthday cake a few days after chemo, to presenting a brand-new service delivery framework, successfully, to Board. Accepting the simple truth that I love them, and they love me is a very powerful thing.

Last but not least, is the importance of a quality employer. By quality, I don’t mean blue-chip super tech giants or John Lewis, but one that values its people, demonstrably, every day, regardless of its size. In my experience, an employer does this by letting its employees be themselves – to have trust that if you say you’re well enough to work, then you’re well enough, giving you the tools you need to do your job brilliantly.

A quality employer recognises that despite the need to have consistent policies in place, someone being treated with cancer will trigger that infamous sickness policy pretty quickly. A quality employer is therefore flexible, not letting the implementation of its policies overly inhibit the ability of a good employee to do good work.

Crucially, a quality employer is realistic, for much the same reasons as I needed to be realistic in my quest for resilience. I’ve been exceptionally lucky to have worked for several quality employers, and it is no coincidence whatsoever that my greatest career development achievements, whilst managing these often horrid conditions, have been when working for the best employers, and I cannot thank you enough for that – you know who you are.