73: Is This Career Worth Getting Sick For?

Have you ever had to ask yourself: “Is this career worth getting sick for?” 

In this solo episode, I take you behind the scenes of a new project launching the Hurdle2Hope Journal on LinkedIn and share the very first entry that sparked it all. It’s a raw reflection on career, chronic illness, and the pivotal question that changed the course of my life. 

This episode is especially for those living with a health condition, navigating the complex balance between work and wellbeing. If your job is taking more than your body can give, this conversation offers space to reflect, reconnect with what matters, and explore what’s possible when health is truly prioritised. 

💭 KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS: 

• The question “Is this career worth getting sick for?” applies deeply to those living with long-term health challenges. 
• Prioritising wellbeing isn’t just personal—it needs to be supported at a workplace level. 
• Aligning with your purpose is essential during times of emotional turmoil or burnout. 
• People with lived experience offer valuable insight into reshaping how we work and lead. 

🔗 SHOW RESOURCES: 

• Episode 73 Blog Is This Career Worth Getting Sick For? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/career-worth-getting-sick-teisha-rose-rbzfc
• Healthcare Frontline Wellbeing Workshop – 25 - June 25
  hurdle2hope.com/frontlinelive 
• Connect with me on LinkedIn: Teisha Rose
  Follow the Hurdle2Hope Journal series 
• Related Episodes:
  Episode 45 – Building a Meaningful Career Through Illness
  Episode 34 – Muscle Tension Dysphonia & How Allied Health Transformed My Recovery 

If you LOVED this episode, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me @hurdle2hope. 

Don't forget to Follow Wellbeing Interrupted on your favourite podcast platform.

Discover more by visiting www.hurdle2hope.com/healing-mindset-illness

Always remember to thrive after a life-changing diagnosis... Your Mindset is Everything!


Learn more about the Hurdle2Hope® Roadmap by watching the Mindset Masterclass Reclaim Your Life. It's available now on-demand.

Podcast Website http://www.wellbeinginterrupted.com/


Contact Teisha or Hurdle2Hope® for more information or feedback Contact Us

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Transcript

Transcript Episode 73 Is This Career Worth Getting Sick For?

Teisha Rose: [00:00:00] Hey there. Teisha here and welcome to episode 73 of Wellbeing Interrupted. Today is a solo episode. , 

 So hopefully you.

, enjoyed the chat in last week's episode with Anha Devena all about sleep. I know, I've definitely been implementing some of her strategies. It was a, yeah, I really got a lot out of that talk, so hopefully you did as well.

Today though, I wanted to chat to you about a new little project. I've got .

The Hurdle2Hope Journal, um, on LinkedIn a lot more now, mainly because I'm doing so much of this work with healthcare practitioners, with disability support workers in relation to their wellbeing. .

So, yeah, I've started writing, which I love writing, so I thought, let's put some thoughts down in the Hurdle2Hope Journal. The tagline [00:01:00] for this journal is for people navigating life-changing illness and professionals that support them.

So the first journal entry was, is this career worth getting sick for? I really think this is a great topic to chat about because it impacts everyone, you know. It really impacts us whether we have a health condition or not, because if we're. Feeling good. Our, um, our job is impacting that, then that question needs to, , come up as well.

So I wanna share my thoughts around that

and share how those thoughts have changed over the years. So enjoy this episode just really quickly, hopefully my voice. Is okay through this. I sometimes listen back to the episodes and think, oh my goodness, I don't sound great For those new to the podcast. . I live now with muscle [00:02:00] tension dysphonia, muscle tension.

Dysphonia is the tightening of the muscles above the voice box at the moment, I think living in the caravan, even this cold weather at the moment, we've hit. Winter here in Daisy Hill. That can really tighten everything up. I'm going to a physio this afternoon, so hopefully they'll work on that. Um, but yeah, sometimes my voice does sound a bit croaky or goes up a bit much and sounds a bit funny.

, but yeah, hopefully please put up with it. , I didn't want my voice stopping me from sharing all my thoughts, so enjoy this episode. Is this career worth getting sick for? [00:03:00] 

Okay, so we'll do things a little bit differently. I'll read through the journal. Is this career worth getting sick for? As I'm reading, have a little bit of a time to, I guess, let your mind wander, reflect on your own struggles with your career, balancing that with your health condition., if you work in healthcare, also, I hope you get a bit out of this message as well, because burnout, what [00:04:00] you're experiencing is very real, and I think people with lived experience can actually help in addressing this issue.

Is this career worth getting sick for? 

, what do you do when your life is interrupted by multiple sclerosis at just 22?

At first, you survive. You don't share your diagnosis with your workplace. You're worried it might impact your career plans. You are worried that it will reflect your work ethic, so you hold tightly to the life you thought you'd have. You keep working, you keep pushing through symptoms. You avoid time off unless totally necessary.

You are angry, you're frustrated, not just at the diagnosis, but at the fact that it's getting in the [00:05:00] way of your career. A career you'd so carefully planned,

 but holding on that tightly, that doesn't do your health any favors, eventually you'll crash. 

For me, that crash meant months and months in hospital, physically, emotionally paralyzed. I experienced the disconnect between my mind and my body. For the first time ever. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to move my toes, my legs, but they didn't respond. The nights I found were the worst. Wide awake, petrified, I'd be dependent on others for basic functioning for the rest of my life.

And it was in that space. I eventually asked myself the question, is this career worth getting sick for? [00:06:00] No, absolutely not. Even though I loved my time at Telstra being part of their graduate program, receiving promotions, having a clear succession plan in corporate training and development, none of it was worth jeopardizing my health.

The aha moment, those crystally moments, what Oprah would call the aha moments, feel like a gift. When they arrive in your twenties, because from that point on, I began consciously rebuilding a life that supported my health, a life that was conducive to my wellbeing and not working against it.

That decision saw me leave my corporate career. I traveled overseas and returned to university to study social work, [00:07:00] but my new career. Working in emergency housing brought a different kind of challenge I took on the stress of those experiencing homelessness, 

navigating a broken system, we are making a positive impact. As a practitioner, that required so much more energy that than MS could give me, so it was a different career. Same outcome though. More relapses, more hospital stays, more reflection, and another really difficult decision to walk away from a job I loved.

Because once again, even when I was a social worker, my career wasn't worth getting sick for. But here's the thing, those decisions were made over 15 years ago. Back then, I really believe that prioritizing my health and wellbeing was my responsibility [00:08:00] alone.

That it was up to me to be flexible, to be innovative, not my workplace.  

Okay, so that's the first half of this journal entry. But then the second part is talking about the irony in this story. So the irony, I think now reflecting back on what my situation is, 

I haven't had an ms relapse since 2012, which is amazing. So for over a decade now, my MRIs have shown no new.

Disease activity. This doesn't mean life has been easy, but there's definitely a striking irony. The people who've helped me stay well, the doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, as well as all the alternate therapies I've had, they're now the ones burning out. [00:09:00] They're exhausted, overworked. Often unsupported carrying the emotional and physical load for others while sacrificing their own wellbeing.

That's what makes this moment so urgent because while my strategy years ago was to walk away from careers that harmed my health. That shouldn't be the only option people have today. We can do so much better now for the people who give so much of themselves every day, they deserve more.

, I have a message to managers. If you're leading a team, especially in health, disability, or aged care, don't wait for rock bottom to trigger change what MS has taught me. I. Is simple but powerful. To live well, you [00:10:00] have to be proactive. Every decision I make is filtered through this one question, 

is this conducive to my wellbeing being? And the truth is that mindset doesn't just apply to individuals. It applies to how we lead. How we support our teams, how we build workplaces and value people. 

And the truth is that mindset doesn't just apply to individuals. It applies to how we lead, how we support our teams, and how we build workplaces that value people, not just the clients we serve. , but also the staff that make that care possible.

 So there's a lot. In that journal article a lot that's come from my experiences with ms. And as always, I reflect on those experiences, [00:11:00] not to emotionally take me back to some, some of those moments, but really to reflect on how I evolved during my twenties and thirties.

And at the bottom of the journal article and what we'll chat about now is like always, I want you to reflect on what I share onto your own life.

Have you ever had a moment that made you question whether your work was costing you too much? What did you do to navigate through that? And this is relevant regardless of what your work is. Also very relevant when you're trying to balance work with your health condition.

And one last thing that I've sort of just thought of as I'm chatting about this, , everyone who's going through a crisis, whether it's a crisis created by health condition, by burnout at work, what I talk about is when you're going through [00:12:00] emotional turmoil. When I was going through that turmoil of.

Realizing that I now was dealing with stage four breast cancer, trying to balance that with MS and all other aspects of my life. Part of doing that is really being clear as to what was important to me. , what's important in my life comes to the surface, you know, and all these other ridiculous little things don't matter. They fall away.

That's what we need to do when we're working as well. Aligning with our purpose, and that's what I talk about in this Wellbeing Workshop for healthcare professionals is you get through turmoil by really highlighting what truly matters. What's your purpose, why are you doing the job you're doing, and then using that to guide you and letting go of [00:13:00] things you can't control.

And then as I say in this journal, then it's also up to organizations to meet us halfway, you know, to also create an environment that enables us to reconnect to our purpose. So I've got lots and lots of thoughts about that. I won't talk about all of them now, but what I wanna do is really say, if you are a frontline staff member, visit.

, hurdle2hope.com/frontlinelive. So Frontline live. I'll put the. Details in the show notes as well. That's the Frontline workshop that's happening the 25th of June. This is what I'll go through in a lot more detail, providing you with the Hurdle2Hope roadmap to help you with mindset shifts that enable you to get through burnout, then that emotional [00:14:00] turmoil, and then building some resilience.

But as I said, it's also I totally bel no. It is also up to the organizations you work for to be part of this process as well. If you're living with a health condition, I still , hope you find this useful because our careers they become so difficult. Perhaps my greatest challenge I think in living with MS was balancing my career and what I wanted out of my career with my health condition.

So think about this as well. Also, I did an episode, I'll quickly look it up. I'll put it in the show notes.

It is episode 45, building a Meaningful Career through Illness. Also, I mentioned my voice, . If you are Allied Health professional listening as well, you might be interested in the amazing work my speech therapist has done in helping me with [00:15:00] my voice.

Episode 34, muscle Tension Dysphonia, how Speech Therapy and Allied Health transformed my recovery. A good episode, even if you're, you know, for anyone to listen because you can see. How far I've come, how much I've improved over the last little while, but still, as I said, still have moments I'm struggling.

That's it for me. If you're on LinkedIn, please connect with me, Teisha Rose. Then you can get my journals, , as well. And I'll also be putting some links in the show notes if you're not on LinkedIn. But yeah, hopefully you have an amazing week. I will be off to my physio soon and heading outside, I'm just looking outside and we're in absolute mis and cloud, so I can't see really, um, at the windows too much, so it's gonna be cold.

So have a great day and we'll [00:16:00] chat to you very soon.