I worked part-time in retail all through my phd and am still (18 months later) working the same job, 12 years after starting there and one masters and a PhD more qulified. It is soul destroying sending off application after application and never getting a bite. I have four articles, a book under review, conference papers and VL experience (humanities). I am also spinning into depression Talented, sinking in debt and can see no light at the end of the tunnel. Every application that is rejected without explanation just torches my self esteem a little further - at some point soon I will have to give up on chasing academic jobs and just accept things are what they are. But I love my subject and I just don't know how I would cope psychologically with giving up all the work I have put in. These days I work a 70 hour week - 30 at work and 40 at home doing unpaid and unrecognised academic work to keep pumping out articles and papers in the hopes of getting a job. I am exhausted.

I've been a lurker for a while and the support on this forum has got me through some darker moments, I'm really just hoping that someone out there is experiencing something similar to me and has any advice on how to get through this.

I'm in my third year of a humanities doctorate, working full time, at the writing up almost finished stage, and seriously suffering with rheumatoid arthritis in my hands. The fatigue is draining me, the pain is constant, and everything I have to do involves using my hands. Voice recognition software is out since I have to write things down in order to understand if I understand it (!), typing is painful, handwriting is painful, even picking up a stack of papers is painful. All the good drugs make me unable to think properly, and while I know that this disease is here to stay and I have to find ways to get around it, I am almost at the point of despair. Does anyone else on here have this condition? How do people cope? The internet is full of useful suggestions like: rest, get more sleep, take it easy - all things that, as phd students, we KNOW are just not practical or possible at this stage.

I have, up to now, been working with the ebbs and flows of this disease but I'm struggling with it now, and the the support networks that do exist are woefully inadequate to people in their final desperate stages of phding. I'm really just hoping that someone with a similar problem can give me any advice on how they've managed their condition and their work. Help??