I am 42 and live in Friesland, and I would love to work, but benefits agency UWV gives me hard time. Yet I am now only a busdriver with a lack of experience. It was difficult but I have paid my own training and exams so I made it myself. Yet I feel that the benefits agency does not enough for me to get me to work. I am applying to everything that is available and possible for me to do. If it comes to jobs it is pretty hard to find a suitable job in the Northern regions as there are not that many available.
I worked for a period of time as a truck driver. In 2005 I all of a sudden suffered from a sudden pain between the ribs when I was loading and unloading. Still I continued working until that one wet summerday, during that day with heavy rain I got a bad pneumonia. Pain in the ribs and the result was that subsequently lifting became impossible and that's difficult when you bring around beer kegs. I ended up in hospital and got into the sickness benefits as part of my left lung had collapsed, after a period of recovery I could sometimes on a good day I was able to drive a concrete mixing truck
I could not even walk normally and also went to the pain clinic in hospital as the pain got worse and worse. After a year and a half it was a lot better with me and I wanted to work again. From my eighteenth I've already been working fulltime jobs. First in the hospitality and later on the truck. I've never sat still one minute and always worked hard. I was getting crazy sitting at home doing nothing. But if I was doing to much again I was punished straight away. The pain pulling through felt like having a cardial problem and that was how the medics reacted the first few times and I was rushed by ambulance to the emergency room.
My body was examined in hospital and the diagnosis of Tietze's syndrome led to another and lighter kind of job search, until suddenly a job as a receptionist onboard of a ferry presented itself through an "old" colleague, who knew me already from my restaurant years. I had worked for this boss before and was already familiar with sailing. So that was not a big deal to get used again to the sailing life.
I could not consume all my happiness in this job as after three years out of nothing my body gave up on me and I got stuck in the sickness benefits again and thus lost my job, getting back was not an option because, according to Danish doctors due to my sickness I was 80 to 100 percent disapproved and the labor market I could not enter due to this diagnoses. To be eligible for a benefit in Netherlands I had to be approved as healthy. In my country they say it is something that you have so just get used to it, the doctors don't even take it as a serious matter. So why was it approved by the World Health Organisation in my country. And so it happened that I was all of a sudden fully fit again. (on paper)
And that just that my illness is mentioned here only as a condition and it is difficult to be in between two camps (countries) that are having a totally different opinion. In my last reassessment, I became pretty angry about this matter. "But according to you guys there is nothing wrong with me, at least that is what you say so I am fit enough to enter the labour market fully," I yelled at the doctor. And I said that I otherwise would have to work illegal and when I would collapse we would see what will happen. The doctor decided to take the matter into his own hands, and gave me the answer "But you can always get back later into the sickness benefit." If I am feeling well I may fully work?
Hmm.... strange that I am a 100% fit to work and that I can do everything I want. I hope very soon to begin as a bus driver. Twenty hours until thirty hours per week I will bring everyone from point A to point B. Of course I had a medical exam and there is nothing that should obstruct me in my job.
It took several months for the people of the UWV realized that I'm unstopable, they approved me well and hopefully will also my benefit money partly stop. Driving on the bus that's my new challenge in this life and experience is the big stumbling block for the employers. Because yes, I think that working with people is great. "But I'd better be listening to my body now and I already had a wonderful job at sea, but the high stress level in this case was the killer. When I see how relaxed I am now, I am thinking sometimes. ''This should have happened much earlier, when I was still in a good "shape".Although this will be a job on a temporary base, I will be starting a new episode in my life.
The Old Sailor
