The coup de gras - sacked while recovering from suicide attempt

WOMAN No 2 (my employer) sacked me by email while I was recovering from my suicide attempt on the mental health unit. 

It was no real shock - it had been coming since April.

I had been signed off work in March with 'poorly controlled diabetes, stress and exhaustion'.

Picture the scene: a Saturday evening, I was cooking dinner for Sarah (Woman No 1) and me, in the first weekend off I had that year.

Texts start coming in from employer. Sarah paces the kitchen: "How dare she do this on your first weekend off?" she protested. Again and again.

I was under pressure, personally, professionally and with my uncontrolled diabetes.

Two weeks later my employer decided to bring disciplinary proceedings against me.
My employer, Angela, decided that she had had enough of me being off work sick as I battled to get my diabetes under control. She cobbled together trumped up charges against me.

She then set in train a series of meetings over the next five months, summoning me to London while I was off sick and my diabetes was yoyo-ing between extreme lows and extreme highs, dreadful hypos and hypers.

Emails back and forth between Angela and my union rep as I tried to defend myself. Soon my GP was signing me off with the added complications of 'depression and anxiety'.

I had to re-learn everything I thought I knew about diabetes, while being constantly monitored by specialist nurses.

Reducing my insulin intake by more than half, testing my blood sugars up to ten times a day, counting my carbohydrate intake constantly and coping with the effects of hypo attacks and high blood sugars. My fingers were dotted with dried blood, like pin cushions, because of the blood tests.

The stress of the disciplinary meetings, and constantly countering the trumped up charges, only made matters worse of course.

On and on it went for five months. No respite, no control, just deepening depression and exhaustion. Finally culminating in my suicide attempt. Angela merely administered the coup de gras with her email sacking.

I read her email in my hospital bed in the mental health unit. All that heartache and pain, all that struggle, all that fighting, all that sickness. And depression and anxiety. All for nothing.

But what of Woman No 1 - Sarah, during all this time? What was she doing? Good question.

Next: Woman No 1 - anatomy of The Break-Up