Workplace Accommodations

[nikogirl18]

Hi all - my endo has caused me a few abscesses from work since my surgery. I’m lucky that my work are so understanding with it and they want to help me manage as best I can.

I am due to have a meeting next week to see how they can help and what if any accommodations they can put in place for me.

I mainly struggle with pain management and energy levels - I get exhausted towards the end of the day.

What have your workplaces done for you or put in place to help you out and make working with endo a bit easier?

[SeedsandNuts]

It's always helpful to get support and understanding at work. I'm glad to hear your work is supportive. I hope you make a good recovery and all goes well for you. Have you discussed support from Occupational Health at work?I made work aware that I have endometriosis. They're quite understanding and willing to make some reasonable adjustments, I will be getting Occupational Health support ( as advised by my physio) due to back pain. I will trial an adjustable standing desk to see if it helps - sitting or standing for too long is a pain. The height of my computer has also been adjusted. Exhaustion, low energy, back and leg pain are a major struggle. At the end of the work day, I struggle to manage any other activity.

To cope, I am more mindful of my nutrition and add some manageable exercises to my lifestyle .

Let's keep hope alive!👍

[Sunset-lady]

I would fully recommend occupational health. They did a great report for me outlining lots of reasonable adjustments to make my life easier. One of the main things that stops me stressing is that they no longer have trigger points for me so I don’t eed to worry about having to attend meetings if I'm absent. I have had very little time off but it's good to know. Another thing that's important is that I need more breaks and I'm not expected to attend certain things any more which is brilliant as I've been very anaemic and extremely tired. You can see the report before your employer and agree on any changes. I thought they were great 👍

[BioEm]

I've got adenomyosis and endo - my periods are hideous both in terms of pain, insomnia and also the amount of blood and clots. Having my period also triggers my IBS. All of which does not make working in the office very nice - particularly as we don't have a toilet nearby ( a 5 min walk away through several other offices and open spaces - not fun if you've just flooded and need to clear yourself up), and no access to a kitchen either.

I can cope with the pain & bleeding as long as I have access to my presciption pain meds (which I need to take with food and a lot of water), my heat blankets and my TENS machine. And a close by toilet! It also helps to wear loose comfortable clothing and be able to know that I can do and lie down for a bit if necessary. If I had to go into the office while bleeding heavily, with IBS and also in pain it would overwhelm me both physically and from a mental health perspective. Not to mention how much that extra stress would make the pain so much worse!

Because of all of this I spoke to Occ Health after my diagnosis. They agreed that a reasonable adjustment would be for me to work from home when I have my period. I'm lucky in that my cycle is fairly regular/predictable so it's easy to know when it would be too difficult to be at the office. My job is also hybrid anyway, so it's not asking too much to just have an extra few days working from home when it's that time of the month.

My employer, Occ Health and manager have been great surrounding this so I would definitely recommend you go to Occ Health as they can really help you with reasonable adjustments.

We're just about to have a big change in my dept (new head of dept and new line manager) and it makes me feel somewhat secure that I have these adjustments agreed officially via Occ Health, just in case the new people are a little less understanding than my current boss is. But I wouldn't be able to work in my job if I didn't have these adjustments in place.