How is it working as an Engineer while having a chronic disease?

I am a person who does not usually talk about diseases around a professional context. Or maybe should I?

More than a decade now, I have an autoimmune disease named ulcerative colitis. This have started after a lot of personal stress, “came” and decided to “stay”. Quite aggressive in my case, and a lot of experiments in order to make it manageable.
Back then, I was not able to understand how to manage it, and especially in working environments in Greece it was almost impossible.

While I was in this rabbit-hole of not being able to do something about my health, but also not being able to stop working (as there was a need to work), my body was still reacting in the same way.

For more than 10 years now, I am in the IT industry. From being a web developer, sales advisor, data digitization engineer, backend developer and more, I felt that this is the industry where I belong.

While IT is one of the most popular ones for making a lot of money too, it was not a true case for me, almost never. And this resulted to be of course one of the most stressful things about my health. I was always trying to move forward and being able to maintain and live my life.

But "Is it the field where I belong?"

The same question over and over again..

I was feeling that if a company doesn’t pay me well, then my work is not valuable. And that kept my body for more than 8 years to react bad to myself. And again and again, I was always in a loop of “what I’m going to do? Is this my life from now on?”.

Of course, I never thought with logic, that a company wants to gain from everything..

I somehow then managed to push back my disease flareups, however every time a small problem that was coming, my body was again an active bomb.

And then, a period in my life came where I started realising things. It was this period right after and during Covid, where I was asking myself “and now what?”. I was feeling bad with my job, I was in a toxic working environment (and this wasn’t helping at all), and I thought again and again, that I was the problem. I had already achieved a few things, but again I wasn’t feeling right.

Somewhere there, I stopped working. This bold desicion came, and even if I decided it, I was feeling that I have done the wrong thing. “What people will say?”, “What is she doing? Is she crazy?” were some phrases that came to my mind or from others’ mouths.

I wanted to find myself. For a long time, I was trying to improve my health, but I was not able to dream, or to explore things I like. Then I managed my health.

But now what?

I had never had time to read books because I wanted to. I only had time to read something because it was needed to. Everything was in need, and not in will.

Break is always good...

I took this “sabbatical” break, and just after a month of this break, I start having energy to read and spend time to learn new things around me. A book that really helped me was “Seneca – Letters from a Stoic“. A book with actual letters from a stoic, difficult to read in some cases, but easy to create questions for the modern times we live.

This gave me energy to think for my future. It was one of the best times as I was fully in remission, but also able to dream and think again.
Because I don’t want to create any confusion, I managed my health not only with just a book but also with:

Being in a relationship where we are true to each other, and be able to communicate all the things
Being able to have proper and healthy meals (and finally able to eat veggies and fruits!)
Prioritize myself instead of any type of work. And by this I mean, that I was pushing myself to finish something to prove to others that I’m eligible of doing things (as I had a lot of gaslighting in the past). Being able to say “No, I’m done today”, and to truely mean it, I was able to go and relax and do other things I enjoy.
Find things that give me energy. Yes I know, this seems a bit of these guides on the internet, that everything is easy etc etc. No! It wasn’t easy, and I’m still trying to find myself. I believe that you never actually find yourself if you’re trying to change things around you. It’s a continous process.
Find ways to exclude toxic and manipulative situations. This is also a continuous process. I find myself a lot of times in this situation, but I’m always trying to keep “notes”, on how to manage the next situation that will come. Remember, there always be people that are toxic, and you cannot imagine how many of them are.

Almost done...

During this phase, I also started my freelance company, to provide custom solutions to some customers I already had back in Greece, while I am able to have flexibility with my schedule.

All in all what I’m trying to say from this post, is that being an engineer with a autoimmune disease is not easy. While in other industries people might think that being in a office position might be easier, from my personal experience, I can say that this is not true.

Autoimmune diseases are not easy to manage, with whatever difficulties you might have. They are this unstable factor in your life which you cannot count on, in order to make your life better.

So my opinion is try to find things that can make your life a bit easier. Start always with small steps, to be able to continue.

If you have any question or you might need any help, I’m always eager to help in these things! Don’t hesitate to send me a message to maria@voreakou.com.

I hope that you liked this article! If you have any question or anything you might want to mention, feel free to contact me!

Talk to you soon! Till then bye!! 🙂