Recuperation is something you should make time for

Learning to Prioritise Recovery

I completed my last chemotherapy session on 8 February 2010. There was another session scheduled for 1 March, but when I saw the ninth session was set for 22 March, I protested, telling my consultant that I saw my life resuming after 1 March and was not mentally prepared for further chemotherapy beyond that date.

My objection resulted in my multidisciplinary team cancelling the eighth session, but that was not my original intention.

Having been given my life back, I was back on the job market, seeking an opportunity, when my consultant said I needed another six months of recovery before returning to work.

Although I had a very generous welfare package, I wanted to return to work. My sense of independence drove me, just as it was clear that bills and the mortgage had not taken a break due to my illness.

The Cost of Returning Too Early

Within seven weeks of my last chemotherapy session, I was back at work. Then my body told me a different story: I neither have the strength nor the capacity for this responsibility. I need to negotiate an adjustment or resign.

The management was very understanding, and I was granted Wednesdays off. This break helped greatly throughout 2010. It was clear I had not allowed myself enough time to recover. However, I did not have the luxury of taking extended time off, as I was self-employed.

More recently, when I was diagnosed with malignant prostate cancer in June 2024, I chose radiotherapy and decided to work through the treatment in September and October of the same year.

On three weekdays during treatment, I had to finish early due to unmanageable fatigue, a known side effect of radiotherapy.

Pushing Through Despite the Warning Signs

Yet, after radiotherapy, I worked for another month as my strength waned, and I realised I needed more specialised care, for which I am grateful Brian provided in Cape Town. I was on sick leave for seven weeks, and although I was paid, I felt the urge to return to work halfway through the leave.

I returned on the first working day of 2025. I was not fully ready, but my spirit was willing; my body struggled beyond its capacity. I pushed through when another two months off would have been ideal.

Throughout 2025, aside from my holidays, hospital appointments and an episode of epididymitis—after attending the hospital, I returned to work; by December, I still had 14 days of annual leave remaining.

For someone coming off a cancer diagnosis and radical radiotherapy, I had overworked myself out of recovery and into a demanding work environment, complicated further by political issues within management. The mentality of just powering through.

A Wake-Up Call

When, on Monday, I experienced the recurrence of unexplained juvenile stomach cramps, there was a suspicion that I could endure the pain, and I did for hours.

A contractual obligation that we delivered to the client every Monday, which I controlled, I promptly completed ahead of schedule, posting the results before I left the office.

While the stomach ache did subside, it took its toll. I was in bed all of Monday, on nil-by-mouth except for essential medication. The same continued through Tuesday and most of Wednesday.

Amidst this, I realised: I do not give myself enough recovery time because I am driven, compelled or obligated by responsibility, circumstance, or situation. None of which is healthy.

A Commitment to Change

It is a realisation I must keep in mind. I am not in a competition of appearances. Good health will always lead to greater productivity; any shortcomings become visible somewhere.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Hypothetically, a zero-hours contract, it is

Benched and unsubstituted

He reads with a wry smile the many congratulations that greet the announcement of being engaged in a new role beneath which is a story generally untold of process and procedure that confers invisibility and humiliation on the subject affected.

In a similar engagement just 5 years before, an associate role gave contract terms of 100% billing for client assignments and where there were no assignments you were benched at 50% of your daily contract rate. It placed the onus on the organisation to ensure that he spent as less time as possible on the bench, for they had to find him billable work to do.

That bench rate disappeared from associate roles after a year, and then responsibilities shifted in radically consequential ways. Now, he could be on contract but without a client assignment and hence, nothing to bill; effectively there is no income.

It was not working for him

Without rewriting the general terms of engagement, the apparent flexibility and fluidity the new construct brings would be ideal if he did not have to revisit the employment market, it is however exceedingly precarious, there was a period that engagements fell from 90% utilisation to 55% utilisation year-on-year that it was prudent to exit that arrangement.

They decided to reignite the associate relationship recently where the matter of full engagement was discussed at length and assurances were given that projects abound for him to rotate other full-time employees out of roles for longer stretches of time. These were convincing enough to lay trust in the prospect, there was work on offer.

After a presentation and discussion that constituted an interview, a contract engagement was offered as he was assigned to a manager who was yet to begin in his role. The scheduled start date of two weeks time was moved back a week because onboarding processes were ahead of the organisational line of management.

More snags and frustration

Then the proposed assignments with clients could not be taken up because they were of a security-sensitive nature for which enhanced vetting was required and the agency that should have immediately transferred the security status would only offer to share it and that would take months to conclude, even as the term of its validity was running out. This was besides the fact that there was no contracted activity with a sister executive agency he was assigned to for over 4 months already.

Now, having confirmed that the assignee had the necessary clearances even if not in possession of the new sponsor, this should have sufficed, but it took a barrage of pleading emails to engage that thought process and by then, the opportunities being considered for had slipped away.

Zero hours with style

Whilst a valid contract without client assignment seems to break you out of a stretch of unemployment, the critical element of earning an income is lost in the circumstances such that even the agency that facilitated the contract has abandoned the contractor in frustration and resignation.

The many times I have read about ‘zero-hours contracts’ I thought it was redolent of gig-economy stints, piecework, or on-call job roles where you were engaged but not guaranteed any work, along with other strictures that engender such contracts. You never consider this can apply to technical and specialist roles that pay well on an assignment, but nothing at all when not assigned to a client.

Some may suggest, you are at liberty to find other work and return to this associate role when available, it seems an ideal quite different from experience. The only apparent change to the situation is he does not have to undergo the interview and onboarding process anymore, he has everything to be assigned an immediate role, but until then, he is on the most sophisticated castle-in-the-sky highly remunerated zero-hours contract.

Each hour he is still scanning the job boards to send his CV and a cover letter still applying for a role in mid-December. It is going to be a cold lonely Christmas with little to cheer about if nothing changes soon. Bills due, rent due, what a sordid tale, it is. 

Thought Picnic: In my cave of safety?

I wasted many things

“Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips…” [BibleHub Isaiah 6:5 (KJV)] These were the words of Isaiah the prophet as his inadequacies became evident in the realisation that he had seen God.

For one as I with many gifts unused and considerable potential unrealised, blessed with the grace and favour of fortune and opportunity that I have many times not appreciated, I find myself so literally undone by situation and circumstance, yet I should maintain a broader perspective.

A sorry story told

As a mere mortal with issues and vulnerabilities, feelings and imperfections that can stand out well beyond where you want expression, the vicissitudes of life can be quite impactful as you continually berate yourself of inadequacy and encourage yourself of possibility.

For a story tries to speak itself with volume that there was a time you could do this or another when you never had to think of that, facility and provision were present to do all that you desire and much more from that which you have acquired, but for the moment in which you reflect, you have nothing to deflect.

A longing for the hills

In the days of the seasonal chills,
As nothing is ringing from the tills,
You ingest with routine your nightly pills,
And wonder how to address the growing bills,
Whilst hoping you can dream away the ills.

Like the prophet, there is a humiliation of humility that strips you of the confidence that once betrayed your innate abilities, your voice is lost in the cacophony of the silence that envelopes you, the shell in which you find refuge is almost like you are caught in the helplessness of resignation, you want to lie down believe it is just a bad dream.

Come, come, come away

You cannot despair of the cycle of life, the turns that bring experience and lesson, for which knowledge of the past is not necessarily preparation for the present. How sometimes we could have seen the future better, but where would life’s excitement come from if you knew before it became known?

We all have our caves that little place that is hardly comfortable but generally safe, you can lick your wounds in secret, cry yourself to exhaustion in solitude, stir your spirit with some resolve and then rise to start the journey to where home and love abides. It takes time, time is the sting of realities ticking away like a clock, never really beginning to ever deeming to continue without an end.

After February is recovery

February

February 2010 represented an amazing month in my life, one that would not soon be forgotten and one that represented a whole range of issues, changes, decisions and events.

Most particularly, it was the month in which I lost a very dear friend and that in which my regime of treatment for cancer stopped for other elements of my health improvement to gain a footing.

Monday should have been the day for the scheduled 8th chemotherapy session but my medical team decided to stop at the 7th giving me very needed respite from a treatment that literally knocks me out for a week.

The strength I thought I had

So, I went into town and walked up a few streets before ending up at the steak restaurant I last visited with my friend some 8 months ago.

Whilst mentally, I am so excited to be off the treatment, I seem to have forgotten that chemotherapy really did take a lot out of me that I really do not have the strength I think I have and I was tiring quite easily after short walks – my sleep patterns need some regulation for someone preparing for work.

One thing that has not relented through it all is the bills, they come as new and they come as threats, they all however just have to wait till there is income to settle them and as usual it is the ones I owe the least that are the most aggressive.

The search for work

Sometimes, I wonder how one can maintain a mental state for genuine recuperation if one is continually buffeted by matters that can be the source of much worry and consequent stress – definitely not what you or I need.

The networks are being tapped, the résumé is going places and enquiries are being made just as one engages in studies of trends in the marketplace, the need to be productive and relevant is here and now.

The process of recuperation would just have to merge with the time of resuming work, not too many luxuries can be afforded but help and support is still very welcome and I am thankful for all the support I have received to date.

February 2010, all your 28 full days, I remember, but thanks for the advent for March and the march to great expectations and a wonderful life – welcome.

Thought Picnic: No pills for the bills

Our plans smothered by life

If only the plans we make fall into place in the clockwork of life, our stories would so different, ever so different. If we saw the future of today a year ago, what would we have done to preempt it all to be so different?

These thoughts come and go with one assurance that life gives hope and adversity comes to go, the man is made by how he wades through his adversity not by the adversity itself.

Insuring the assurance

The insurances for what cannot be assured vary, but we fail to insure against them, without compulsory insurance, the able would not insure, the wealthy will not bother, the healthy would believe invincibility and the living would dare immortality but life deals cards from decks you have not touched.

Your priorities vary from their impatiences, you wonder if the whole sum of life is really the battle of desire over restraint, maybe for some it is moderation over excess but those who have the luxuries needn’t be affected by the reality of lack.

The gift of good health

In my realisation, the greatest prize is the gift of good health, with it you can go to places and make great changes, without it you seek mercy from those who might believe you have great potential, if only, but now only you remain with the hope of reprieve.

You wonder how the flippancy of a night in any hotel you wish to stay in parallels the scrimp and save that stretches to three weeks awaiting new manna from heaven.

One by one, the creature comforts are lost to unpaid bills for which the pharmacist has no pills, you diligently swallow the pills and the bitter ones too, you have been told they will make you well, your wellness is the key and let it be on time you pray.

Cherish health

You are ably showing your inability to be able to accentuate your ability with drowsiness written on three pills, you need one liveline, one faith, one hope and big hand of love to lift you out of the quagmire – the just shall surely live by faith.

Then your mind wanders back to that day you were told your illness will last months and you will have no income for almost a year, did you need a Joseph for a nightmare and you forgot to get him out of prison?

The lessons are well learnt, cherish health, insure against the improbable and be ready to tackle the amazing and God give you strength to come out strong on the other side.

Nigeria: Sack that slovenly Senate

I have to work

In my line of work as a self-employed consultant, I work an average of 20 days a months, on occasion there could be up to 23 days and there are cases where I might have to work overtime. The day consists of 8 hours.

However, because I am not a salaried man, I can only be paid for the approved and signed hours I have worked. For instance, my hours added up to 200 because of some administrative issues in October, they were down to 168 in November and because of my holidays, I have put in only 112 hours in December.

There would be a world of difference between what I took home in October compared to what I am taking home in December – there is probably a break-even point below which what I take home cannot meet my outgoings and then I would be running a dangerous deficit.

When I look at the hours I put in for December, I know for sure that I would not breakeven on 8 days of work which adds up to 64 hours and definitely it would be an administrative loss to my client if I only put in just 8 hours or effectively just worked 8 hours out of a possible 160 hours for all sorts of reasons.

An utterly disgraceful and abject failure

Why am I off on one of my detours of analogy and being a raconteur? I just read that the Nigerian Senate only passed 8 out of 120 bills [1] in the whole of 2008.

If that were an academic score, it would be so below any ranking for a failure, the assessor would seek alternative means of explaining why this might have happened.

In fact, there can be no valid explanation for this but maybe one should be a bit reserved in passing judgement.

They probably have excuses

If 120 bills were presented to the Senate, they must definitely have some inference, reference or possible effect for the Nigerian people, one would assume.

If 112 of those bills could not be passed for any range of reasons one can wonder if the Senate never had time to debate them having been constitutional sitting for at least 181 days of the year. That equates for just about 9 months of working days.

It cannot be that they were only able to pass a bill a month in the whole of 2008, surely, Nigerian issues should attract more attention, urgency, application and seriousness than to have been left to a situation where this appalling result becomes so evident.

This is unacceptable

The Senate has been slow, slothful & slovenly, this is a country where about 70% live on less than a dollar a day and those people do back-breaking work literally everyday God sends and they are still hardly able to fully meet their needs.

These wronged people are then represented by a cable of fully-fed, overpaid, squabbling Senators with their noses in the trough who are pre-occupied with their in-fighting and overcome with corrupt activity that there is no time for them to really engage in what they were employed to do.

There is no institution, establishment or organisation that can abide a kind of result like this apart from an unaccountable, irresponsible and lackadaisical Nigerian Senate that is not in reverence of its electorate and care nothing for the duties they have been assigned.

Sack them all

There is every reason to demand the sacking of the whole Senate with the uproar that should include Nigerians getting a refund for work not done – these people earn about 500 times the pay of Nigerian and apparently have nothing to show for it.

In effect, politics is not working for Nigeria and if no one can do something about this with a clear condemnation of the Senate leadership who should hold their heads in shame and disgrace, we are far off from genuine reform.

Source

The Punch: Senate passes eight out of 120 bills in 2008