You Take The Good, You Take The Bad...
...which seems to be this week for me, capsulized into today.
My boss told me last week that I needed to consider applying for FMLA leave because of having to be out so frequently. Translation: Your work is awesome, but your absentee record, even though you work at home on the days you can't make it in, makes you a candidate for a layoff unless we have paperwork to protect you.
I was a bit put out at first--to lay off a disabled employee for physical absences while work is being done at home is all sorts of wrong and against the law under ADA--but he has a point. Without documentation of the fact that I have health conditions that make it practically impossible to drive 100 miles round trip 5 days a week, there's nothing to stop it from happening. So, I dutifully had my doctor fill out the paperwork today and will file it Monday.
My visit to the doctor was a visit to discuss the latest bloodwork, which is no fun. The upshot, however, is actually good news for once.
When my doctor looked at the numbers and tried to figure them out, he was checking arthritis sites and finally the name jumped off the page at him: Polymyalgia Rheumatica, a condition that causes stiffening and swelling of the muscles around the shoulder and pelvic joints. We've started on a steroid treatment to verify the condition--if the SED rate goes down and the pain fades, we've found a diagnosis.
That's the good news. But to top it all off, my mother called to let me know my cousin's cousin (from the other side of her family, the side that's not related to me) died Wednesday when the earthen dam he was standing on gave way and he broke his neck in the fall. He was 22. He was the same age as my cousin Jason, who died suddenly as well in a freak accident (he'd injured his knee and a blood clot tore loose and ended up in his lungs--he died trying to get to the bedroom door and get help). Mom reminded me that my cousin Melanie's grandmother has in the past 10+ years lost one grandson, a daughter, 2 husbands, and now another grandson. Good grief.
You take the good, you take the bad.
My boss told me last week that I needed to consider applying for FMLA leave because of having to be out so frequently. Translation: Your work is awesome, but your absentee record, even though you work at home on the days you can't make it in, makes you a candidate for a layoff unless we have paperwork to protect you.
I was a bit put out at first--to lay off a disabled employee for physical absences while work is being done at home is all sorts of wrong and against the law under ADA--but he has a point. Without documentation of the fact that I have health conditions that make it practically impossible to drive 100 miles round trip 5 days a week, there's nothing to stop it from happening. So, I dutifully had my doctor fill out the paperwork today and will file it Monday.
My visit to the doctor was a visit to discuss the latest bloodwork, which is no fun. The upshot, however, is actually good news for once.
- My Epstein-Barr virus count is down from 2900+ to 2100+, which is pretty amazing. At this rate, my doctor says, if nothing else goes wrong, I might be in remission from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as early as a year from now.
- My bloodwork was mostly normal--red blood cell counts were low but within normal range, liver and thyroid enzymes normal, blood sugar normal. That was a great relief.
- That said, my SED rate was 47, well over 2x normal and even higher than it was last month.
When my doctor looked at the numbers and tried to figure them out, he was checking arthritis sites and finally the name jumped off the page at him: Polymyalgia Rheumatica, a condition that causes stiffening and swelling of the muscles around the shoulder and pelvic joints. We've started on a steroid treatment to verify the condition--if the SED rate goes down and the pain fades, we've found a diagnosis.
That's the good news. But to top it all off, my mother called to let me know my cousin's cousin (from the other side of her family, the side that's not related to me) died Wednesday when the earthen dam he was standing on gave way and he broke his neck in the fall. He was 22. He was the same age as my cousin Jason, who died suddenly as well in a freak accident (he'd injured his knee and a blood clot tore loose and ended up in his lungs--he died trying to get to the bedroom door and get help). Mom reminded me that my cousin Melanie's grandmother has in the past 10+ years lost one grandson, a daughter, 2 husbands, and now another grandson. Good grief.
You take the good, you take the bad.