Any advise for returning to work fulltime

[mags22]

Hi there,

I am a grade one teacher who has been on disability for a year and a half due to rapid cycling bipolar 1 and have spent 4 months in the hospital in the past year.  I am due to start teaching again in September.   I am ready and excited to get back to work, and spent much of last year in the school volunteering and substitute teaching.  Everyone at the school knows about my illness thanks to my "crazy" emails and phone calls describing everything in vivid detail while I was very manic.
My main concerns are that teaching is a very demanding and at times stressful job, and it does sort of have cycles where pressure builds around report cards/parent teacher interviews etc.
Are there any other teachers or professionals with bipolar out there who can offer some advise or encouragement?
Thanks,
Mags

[mags22]

thanks,

I have been working with my benefits provider and the school board on a return to work program over the past few months, just haven't had the responsibilities of my own class etc.  I am in Canada so we do things a bit differently I'm sure here, but I really want to try returning to my normal work day and seeing if I can make it work with bipolar.

[Xila31]

I work full time. I have bipolar 2. I work in an office with the public. Sometimes it is very stressful and difficult for me, especially when I am having difficulties controling my emotions. I have been writen up for outbursts. I was a stay at home mom for 5 years previously to this and when I did work it was only part time. This has been very hard for me but I work really hard to not let my bipolar affect others. (Sometimes that is impossible, though.)

My best advice to you is to know you are going to have bad days. Sometimes they happen all of a sudden. You should probably have a plan in place just in case that happens. My mom was a substitute teacher, so I know that might be difficult since you can't randomly just call a sub. It has to be the day before. But since you work with little kids I think having some sort of plan or safe person to help you at the school would be a good idea.

Anway, that's just a thought.

[ILADVOCATE]

Well I can give you some information that might be of help. First of all there are agencies that can help people with disabilities transition back to work. You could find out more at your local independent living center:
http://www.ilru.org/html/publications/directory/index.html
You could think of what type of work might be suitable and as (I know this from my mother who was a teacher) teaching is a civil service job they could if you could do that job work with you to find reasonable accomodations (as can all jobs but civil service jobs are particularly amenable). Also people at the workplace cannot by law make derogatory comments about your disability. And if you want to transition to work gradually Social Security has a work incentives program. Go to their website at SSA.Gov and look under "questions".