You never know what life is going to throw at you.
I’ve had kidney disease for the past 30 years, which means I’ve known for a long time that my kidneys would eventually fail. I just assumed I’d be much older when they did.
About 18 months ago my fears became a reality. One minute I was planning my future with my husband, the next I was hospitalised with kidney failure, preparing for dialysis and being tested for a transplant. Life turned upside down.
(Kidney health is so important but it’s often not talked about, so I’d encourage everyone to get a check-up next time you speak to your GP.) Read more about kidney health here.
I work as a Lending & Wealth Support Specialist in the contact centre. The support and care I’ve had from ING over the last couple of years has been nothing short of amazing. They were able to rearrange my working hours around treatments, and give me all the time off I needed to look after my health. I’m forever grateful for that.
My regular routine now involves peritoneal dialysis, which means I hook myself to a machine every night to remove the bad stuff from my blood. When I started the treatment I found it incredibly challenging. I kept focusing on the negatives – I couldn’t swim in the ocean anymore, I couldn’t travel as much. I was in a really dark place. My mental health suffered and I seriously considered just letting nature take its course.
Thanks to the support and positivity of those around me, I realised: ‘This is not the end of the world. It’s an adjustment’.
I’m on a transplant list now, which can take anything between one and seven years. In the meantime, I’ve been able to take stock of where I am in life, and what I want to achieve personally and professionally. I’m not done yet!
I’m 60 years old, I have a wonderful supportive family and I love working. It’d be easy for me to stay in my current role and not push myself. But that’s not me.
I worked in consumer credit in a previous company, and I have lots of ideas on how we can help improve the experience for our personal loan customers. I’ve even taken it upon myself to learn from ING’s credit assessors in my own time, to see where I could implement some of my ideas. Who knows, it may lead to a new job opportunity down the line. If not, I’m still going to do what I love doing, challenging myself to learn more about the business, and how we can better help customers.
The future is different, but at least there is one. I’m not about to let this disease hold me back.
After all, you can look after your health and still have a career, right?
There’s no reason I can’t do both, as long as I have people around me who back me to succeed.
Lucky for me, I do.