What I wish I could tell my boss: "I was broken, and you fixed me"

I was broken when I came to you. My life felt futile, my existence pointless. I had been crying for days. I was always tired and never hungry. My body weight was down by 15lbs. I’d been suffering anxiety attacks, both day and night, for several weeks. Muscles in my arms and legs were twitching uncontrollably. I’d been to the hospital’s emergency department twice with thoughts of suicide. I was trying to hide it, but I know I looked sick. I didn’t want to admit my mental illness to anyone, but I couldn’t go on hiding my depression. So I came to you.

My brain had turned against me, but you joined my side of the battle

Depression is like a magnet for negative thoughts, so I expected the worst. Fearful of stigma, I told you a softened version of what was happening to me. You saw right through me. You saw how serious it was. You listened, didn’t rush me, and were kinder than I could have expected. At that time nothing was capable of making me happy, but my meeting with you created a spark of hope. Hope that I would get through this, that others might understand.

My brain turned against me during my depression, but you instantly joined my side of the battle. You reassured me. You told me you had noticed something was wrong and had been wondering how to approach it with me. You said I was good at my job and that I was clearly unwell. You told me that I would get better, that I needed rest, and that you would do everything in your power to help that happen – which you did.

You immediately helped me take time off from work. Following your instruction, I went home after that very same meeting. You helped me navigate the work procedures for dropping to half-time work. You were prepared to accept full-time sick leave, but understood my reluctance of being home alone all day.

Half-days were more difficult for you to organise, yet you made it happen. You rallied my work team together and developed a plan for reducing my stress and workload. You treated my mental illness the same way you would have treated any other serious illness – with complete and total kindness.

You never rushed me to return to work. You encouraged me to take my time. You told me of the importance of being fully well to avoid relapse. You spoke to me with such kind understanding that every time I left your office I felt better.

You dealt with a lot of stuff. You and my work team made some stressful decisions without letting me know – without me having to feel any of the pressure. You all took on extra work so I could do less. You never complained about it and you never sought thanks for what you did.

Depression convinces the sufferer that they should deal with it all on their own. I’m glad that I didn’t. I credit a few people with getting me through my depression: my wife, my psychiatrist, and you. Thank you for helping to save my life. I will never forget the way you treated me. I will always remember your kindness.

I don’t know where your empathy comes from – personal experience, experiences of a family member or friend – or just having a kind heart. Wherever it comes from, I am glad that when I went through the worst experience of my life, I was working for you.

Thank you.

What I wish I could tell my boss: "I was broken, and you fixed me"

How we ‘fixed’ our diabetic dad – and saved his life

When their father, Geoff, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the age of 50, brothers Ian and Anthony Whitington were not hugely surprised, and for 10 years, they drifted along and watched from the sidelines.

“Dad had always been the ‘big man’,” says Anthony, 39. “As kids, we thought it was funny. Dad could drink more than anyone, he could eat more than anyone. It was his identity. That’s our dad and that’s what he does.”

“As we got older, of course we worried,” adds Ian, 37. “But everyone around us would say, ‘If he doesn’t want to change, you can’t change him. He has to do it himself.’” So nothing much was done – and Geoff joined the 3.5m adults in the UK who manage their diabetes with ever-greater doses of medication and regular check-ups.

“We were all resigned to our family roles,” says Anthony. “I was a busy financial adviser with four kids of my own. Ian was a busy cameraman with jobs all over the world. Dad was a funny fat guy who drank too much.”

The wake-up calls were different for both of them. For Anthony, it was a family trip to Chessington zoo in 2013. By then, Geoff weighed 127kg (20 stone), had high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart rhythm), plus everything diabetes could throw at him – a swollen prostate, poor circulation, ulcers on one foot and a bone deformity on the other.

“We were walking around this theme park when the bones collapsed through his foot,” says Anthony. “I remember him grabbing a railing, the blood in his sock, getting him back to the car. Suddenly, this thing that the doctor was managing was very clearly something that wasn’t being managed. Dad was seeing people at the foot clinic who had had a limb removed – and the average lifespan after amputation for a diabetic is two years. We were losing him.”

When Anthony called his brother to say time was running out, Ian needed no convincing.

“The rock bottom for me had been my wedding,” says Ian. “Dad stayed up longer than everyone else – he was always the last one in the room, sitting there with a bottle of brandy. I remember looking at him and it was just horrendous. He was crumpled. He couldn’t get up and dance because of his feet, but he was quite emotional. He said something along the lines of: ‘I’ve done my job. You’re my greatest achievement.’ It was as if that was it. He didn’t need to exist any more.”

In 2014, when Geoff was 62, his sons stepped in with their own special intervention that included a complete lifestyle overhaul, multiple health consultations, family holidays and heart-to-hearts, pacts, promises and pretty much constant rows. Two years later and 45kg (seven stone) lighter, Geoff raced through a 100-mile cycle ride from London to Surrey. He has now been taken off all his diabetes medication as well as his blood pressure pills. He says his sons saved his life – and it’s no exaggeration.

As a professional cameraman, Ian filmed most of the journey, and their documentary, Fixing Dad, aired on BBC2 last summer. Anthony’s wife, Jen, a fitness trainer, co-produced the film. There’s also an app for those wishing to do the same, and a book, written by Jen, that includes a meal and exercise programme, plus advice on the mental leaps needed to fix a stubborn family member. The “fixing” terminology couldn’t be more apt for a man like Geoff – who has spent most of his life fixing things for others.

“Everyone described Dad as ‘generous to a fault’,” says Anthony. “He’d pay the parking fines of complete strangers. As kids, we saw him stop the car in the street to chase after muggers. I remember when my wife, Jen, was having a bad day after our first child was born. I was at work so she phoned my dad. We were living in Surrey at the time and Dad said: ‘I’ll come over now. Is there anything you need?’ It turned out he was 100 miles away, but he told Jen he was just down the road.”

“We owed Dad a lot,” Ian agrees. The boys had grown up in Bromley and their parents divorced when they were eight and 10 years old. “It changed the dynamic massively. We were with Mum in the week and Dad at the weekend – and we got into this pattern of Dad not being able to do enough for us. We didn’t miss holidays that richer kids were going on because Dad put it on a credit card. If we wanted to do something, he let us. He was spoiling us, really, and by the time we were adults, his debts were so bad, he was a BT engineer in the day and working nights on the Underground and as a security guard. We felt a lot of guilt about that.”

So why was Geoff so good at looking after others, but hopeless looking after himself? Perhaps, with busy, grown children, he felt a bit redundant. “I think I’d reached the point in my life where my children were happy, they had their jobs, they were OK. I’d worked all my life, I’d done my job and I wasn’t needed,” says Geoff, who has been married to Marilyn, the boy’s stepmother, for 20 years.

“My wife was going to be the one to suffer if anything did happen to me, but I suppose I didn’t give it much thought. My life involved working very long hours, which meant a lot of driving around, and a lot of stopping and eating.” (His sons claim Geoff couldn’t pass a McDonald’s without pulling in, and there was always a can of Coke rolling round the floor of his van.)

So what made him agree to this project? Was it to save himself or to please his sons? “I suppose a little bit of both,” he says. “I certainly didn’t think it could help or change anything – I didn’t know anyone who had reversed diabetes. As far as the filming part was concerned, I ignored it, as that was never going to make it on to the TV. It was another of their little projects that was never going to go anywhere! But they asked me to go along with it for a period of time, like a contract, and I agreed.”

They kicked off with a roadtrip to the Pyrenees. “Dad’s surroundings weren’t helping him, so we wanted to get him away from his takeaways, his TV dinners and fridge full of cellophane,” says Anthony. “The old, fun Dad was disappearing, and we wanted to find that sense of adventure. We got him cooking, cycling, tombstoning. I’m not sure jumping into ice-cold water in the Pyrenees in February is the best thing for someone with atrial fibrillation, but I’ve never seen him as elated as when he got out of that plunge pool.”

While they were away, they talked about Geoff’s mother – a shop worker who would do anything for anyone, and who died from septicemia at 69, when her stomach ulcers went undetected.

“It needn’t have happened and that upsets me more than anything else. I didn’t want my sons to feel like that about me,” says Geoff. On the last night, they went through photo albums and looked at old family pictures, as well as pictures of his grandchildren. “We said: ‘This is all about your family, who don’t want you to be dead in two years,’” says Anthony. “We made a pact and Dad promised to commit to this – we made him swear on the only book he has ever read – Shadow the Sheepdog.”

Back in the UK, the brothers dug out Geoff’s bike and got him back on it – at first with Anthony running behind pushing him up the hills. “After just three weeks, he was at his foot clinic and they said, ‘My God, we’re not having to scrape the ulcers as much. The bloodflow is there – what have you been doing?’,” says Anthony. “That gave Dad hope. It kept him going.”

Discovering a very low-calorie diet that was having some success in reversing diabetes was another breakthrough. The Diabetes UK-funded study by Professor Roy Taylor at Newcastle University put patients on an eight-weeks 800 calories per day diet. This was followed by a long-term, low-carb regime, as close monitoring of Geoff’s blood sugar levels showed that carbs were causing significant spikes.

It wasn’t easy. There were a lot of rows. “We were turning our relationship on its head and it got to the part where we were very obviously being the parents and Dad resisted that,” says Anthony.

“It almost felt like bullying at times, with both of them firing at me together,” agrees Geoff. A typical example is early on when the two were coming to Geoff’s so he bought a Chinese takeaway. “It was a treat and I’d tried to pick foods that were ‘compliant’,” says Geoff.

“But he’d bought enough for 20 people,” says Ian. “The whole table was covered and so we had a go at him. He wouldn’t talk to us for two days!”

This, says Ian, is why families are in a stronger position than health professionals. “The way you eat is incredibly emotional and if you criticise somebody around food, you can upset them very quickly. You need to get over that a bit. Families can cross the line and go where professionals are never going to be able to go. We could say things that a doctor could never dream of saying. You can’t be nicey-nicey all the time. You’ve got to challenge each other. Something we’d say to anybody is don’t be afraid of that conflict.”

When we meet, they are still bickering over a toffee bonbon that Geoff had eaten the previous day while babysitting for Ava, Anthony’s seven-year-old daughter. (Ava had a bag full of them.) Ava promptly told her dad. A series of angry messages were exchanged, with Geoff telling Anthony to find another babysitter. (“He’s not the finished article,” sighs Anthony. “But he’s in reverse gear.”)

Despite the odd slip, everyone appears to be glowing with good health. Anthony and Ian also lost 32kg (five stone) between them – they didn’t ask Geoff to do anything they couldn’t do themselves – while Marilyn has lost 19kg (three stone). The couple cycle together, cook together, and they have ditched the takeaways and TV dinners. “We sit at the table and eat now and we talk about food,” says Geoff. “We really enjoy it.”

With the new book out, the father-and-son team are about to mentor four new families through a similar health overhaul, and are travelling the world as speakers at medical conferences. Anthony has resigned from his career in finance and Geoff has been able to say goodbye to his punishing night shifts.

And in between this, Geoff is back fixing things again. “I just renovated Ian’s shed, rebuilt the roof and I did Anthony’s garage, too. I’ve put shelves up for him. Before all this, I couldn’t have got on a ladder. It has been the best three years of my life – and I just feel terrific.”

• Fixing Dad by Jen Whitington (Short Books), £8.99. To order a copy for £7.64, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call the Guardian Bookshop on 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.

fixingdad.com

How we ‘fixed’ our diabetic dad – and saved his life

What is so excellent about tough function? I vote for a fixed, 3-day weekend for all | Andrew Martin

I’m miserable most of Sunday, since Monday is round the corner. Half the weekend, in fact, is the finish of the weekend

Professor John Ashton, president of the United kingdom Faculty of Public Overall health, caused a stir this week by advocating a 4-day working week. This would improve our mental and physical well being, reduce tension and we would all ”enjoy ourselves much more”.

One particular purpose to bring in a 4-day week is that we function the longest hours in Europe. But this lamentable workaholism is also the cause it won’t happen. Our schoolchildren are among the most-tested in the world. We, alone in Europe, have an opt-out from the 48-hour optimum on the operating week. And the political left is much more committed to assisting the three million Britons who want to operate a lot more rather than less, even however a four-day week could balance this inequality.

The government also launched an extension of the right to request versatile working this week, but, as the TUC pointed out, “there is practically nothing to stop the employer saying no”, and their spokesperson presented me with a acquainted scenario: “A woman requests versatile functioning in the sense of wanting to function a number of hours a week less. Her spouse then compensates for the loss of income by operating a couple of hrs a week a lot more.” As for the political appropriate, if the Confederation of British Sector (CBI) can be so described (which I feel it can), their press officer stopped me in my tracks when I named to ask its response to Ashton’s concept: “I never think we’re going to go for it, Andrew.”

Later, he named back to request no matter whether the concept was that folks would cram five days’ well worth of work into the four days, or simply for a shorter working week. I will not know regardless of whether the CBI is aware that the former was experimented with, apparently successfully, in Utah a number of years ago the latter is nearly the norm in Holland, exactly where a single in three males have an added day off. (“Daddy days.”) I mentioned I would like to know what the CBI thought of either. I heard absolutely nothing more.

I relayed all this depressing news to Prof Ashton, who replied with spirited sarcasm, “I’ve place forward my idea! It is your occupation to shoot it down!” I explained I quite much liked the thought, as a challenge to the inelegance – the uncoolness – of getting a nation of try-hards a country that puts in the hrs only to obtain reasonably low productivity, most likely as a perform of individuals identical extended hours.

The identify of the game is to be in the office even if you’re not carrying out anything: the blight of presenteeism. “Presente!” Ashton barked down the phone when I stated this. He explained that he was invoking Franco’s Spain, the place this was the necessary utterance not just when the college register was taken, but for adults also at public gatherings. (“It truly is nonetheless a extremely emotionally loaded word in Spain.”) There looks to be a prevailing neurosis by which we as a nation agonise and strain but never supply. Our World Cup humiliation, for instance, would have been lessened if we hadn’t been quite so bothered about progressing to the knockouts – and we may have played much better.

I asked Ashton how we’d come to be so wedded to more than-function. “Pass!” he mentioned, in his enjoyably forthright way. “It is a matter for conjecture. I’m confident you can conjecture.”

Appropriate then: protestant function ethic, allied to publish-imperial crisis of self confidence a weakened trade union motion and worry of unemployment the want for downsized workforces to do much more the Americanisation of our business culture (most Americans get two weeks vacation a 12 months) failure to counteract the Gove-ite notion of everyone obtaining to make sacrifices – some a lot more than others – in see of a frantic scramble for survival in a globalised world. (“A race to the bottom,” Ashton calls this).

What is so excellent about tough operate that it affects our entire discourse? We have that creepy Labour formulation, “challenging-operating households”, which suggests dogged morons with their heads down. Why have a loved ones if everyone’s going to be slogging their guts out all the time? The phrase “work in progress” is worn out by overuse. Any variety of guide club or literary seminar is not reading and talking about a guide they’re “exploring” it. And any individual undertaking almost anything at all is “on a journey”, seemingly with no finish in sight, if you happen to be reckless ample to request them about it. For the record, Scott of the Antarctic was exploring he was also on a journey, and look how it finished up. But every little thing should be presented as difficult work, which is why, when the chattering lessons have a chat, they often get in touch with it a “workshop”.

Somewhere along the line, we came off the rails. The most admired Victorian legislation diminished working hours. The Factory Act of 1847, for illustration, restricted the working day for ladies and kids to ten hrs. Tom Hodgkinson, founder of the Idler magazine and Academy, traces the honourable background of not functioning all the time. “Till the Reformation, existence was supposed to be about contemplation, philosophy and the intelligent use of leisure. In ancient Athena, the notion was to be a philosopher in your spare time. In Greek, the word college [skole] means leisure.”

The aspiration lingered in our politics. Hodgkinson cited Oscar Wilde’s essay of 1891, The Soul of Guy Below Socialism (“It is mentally and morally injurious to guy to do something in which he does not discover pleasure”) and John Maynard Keynes’s essay of 1930, Financial Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. That means us, by the way, given that the essay was a prediction of society in 2030. “Science and compound curiosity,” Keynes believed, would guarantee we could “dedicate our energies to non-economic functions.” Some may possibly still want to work, but a 15-hour week “would be really sufficient to satisfy the previous Adam in most of us!” I will throw in Winston Churchill, who, in the booming 50s, predicted “a four-day week, then three days’ exciting” for British workers.

The 4-day doing work week implies the three-day weekend. The weekend Ashton foresees would be a movable feast. “Husbands and wives may possibly want to get off a various added day.” “To keep away from every single other, you imply?” I said. ”I meant for the youngsters,” Ashton chasteningly replied, “so they can see more of their parents.”

I advised him I favored a universal, fixed three-day weekend. We need the formal reduce-off. I’ve been freelance for many years, but I am even now enthusiastic on Fridays, like when I was a child, when Leslie Crowther on BBC1 would shout, “It’s Friday! It’s 5 to five, and it’s Crackerjack!” (Younger readers, Google it). I’m also miserable most of Sunday, because Monday is round the corner. Half the weekend, in fact, is the end of the weekend. And I’m even far more miserable now that everything’s open on a Sunday than I was when every little thing was closed. The present day Sunday is like a man trying to get pleasure from himself at a get together, but he has one thing weighing on his mind (Monday morning).

The added day would make all the difference. It could have something in widespread with the old sabbath, not in the sense of getting tremendously boring, but in being a various kind of day. Ashton suggests a neighborhood services choice, in return for tax credits.

No doubt this is all like these schemes I’d dream up although watching the rain fall on the old Sundays: unlikely to be realised. In which situation we can fall back on the Charwoman’s Epitaph, as quoted by Keynes in that essay of 1930: “Do not mourn for me, friends, don’t weep for me by no means/ For I am going to do nothing for ever and ever.”

What is so excellent about tough function? I vote for a fixed, 3-day weekend for all | Andrew Martin