Am I making a bad decision?

Today is my last day of work. Well, I will continue to work one day a week from home and go to the office once a month until my replacement is found. And I will go into the office to help train him/her for a few days.

The reason I am leaving work is my health is not that great, in case you hadn't noticed. Even though I have cut way back on my schedule, I still am fighting fatigue and aches and pains. One goal in moving is to cut way back on expenses so my non-existent income will not be noticed.

Three years ago,  in the fall of 2012, I was diagnosed with both rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. (Actually it was exactly three years ago tomorrow that I announced this.) At that point I was working two jobs and a total of about 30-35 hours each week.

In early 2013, I resigned from my other job because I could not physically keep up the pace of working so much. It also required nights and weekends. In 2014 I started working fewer and fewer hours in my current job. Now I am down to about 8 hours each week, and I can barely keep up.

With the decision to move and reduce our expenses, it became much easier for me to decide to stop working. I am looking forward to having more time to take care of me.

During the next few months, I will have plenty to do with moving and the holidays and craft shows. Once we settle into a new house, I have no plans on staying home all the time. I would like to find some volunteer work to ensure I get out of the house and don't go stir crazy - but that would be fewer hours with more flexibility. I also plan to continue to go to the gym three times a week. My sanity is important.

But I must return to my original question of am I making a decision? I guess it would be a bad one if I was only thinking financially. But I do not have that luxury any longer.

Back to work....

Today I am back to work after almost three weeks off. I had to dig around to find a pair of pants and haven't yet found my shoes. Summer vacation means shorts, sandals and sneakers, not long pants and work shoes. Our lunches are made (yes I make lunch for both of us every week day) but the nice cat is out so I have to get him back in before leaving. The evil cat is busy plotting our demise....

Yesterday I had a good PT appointment. The therapist thinks that I probably didn't damage any major ligaments and probably only the meniscus, which sometimes does not require surgery. It depends how it heals and how badly it was damaged.

Also my rheumatologist thinks I am doing pretty well - this means no blood work for two whole months and no follow up for three months. Sometimes I have blood work every two weeks and appointments every six weeks so this is much better.

Finally my therapist is an idiot. Okay maybe a little harsh but she doesn't seem to understand my family dynamics so it  was a fruitless discussion. She may become my former therapist shortly. After every appointment with her, I wonder why I am still seeing her. But I try to manage the amount of change in my life and next week I see my new PCP for the first time. So the jury is still out but its not looking that good for her. The real decision is do I still need a therapist.

But now to find the cat and my shoes so I can go to work. Maybe they missed me....

I need to whine!

I'll just say that the best part of my day yesterday was calling my brother at 730 am and finding out he was on the west coast and it was 430 am. Sibling rivalry lives.

 This was my day yesterday:

Monday afternoon my phone would not work. I figured it has a dead battery (not an unusual situation for me) and I'll let it charge overnight and it will be fine. Tuesday morning it would not boot up. I tried everything. Finally I resorted to Google and found I could download a utility which would help me reset my phone (and since it was backed up, it didn't matter). But it took 45 minutes to download and install. Then I got a fail message. So I said GRRR (and WTF) and figured I would deal with it later. I unplugged my phone and it worked.

I got to work. We are about to get new paint, cubes, desks, and carpeting so everything is a bit chaotic. I carefully had packed up my office and desk and marked four boxes as being needed for my desk during all the chaos. There were only three boxes. And after some looking and research, it turns out my boss threw out my most important box (even though it was labeled). He did help me look through the recycling dumpster and we found about half of what I needed.

Then I couldn't connect to the f****ng internet. I tried everything I could and gave up and called our outside IT guy. He said he would be there in an hour and it then took about 30 seconds to fix it. (Why he couldn't walk me through that on the phone I have no idea.)

So finally I could get online and to the server, but I couldn't print. Because the person who was supposed to order toner for the main office printer a month ago, didn't because (a) she doesn't care, she has her own printer; and (b) see above. She apologized and said I could email her anything I needed printed. Half an hour later, I asked again and she hadn't even looked at her email because she (just found out she needed to pack her office and) had been busy packing up her desk. But the toner was due to arrive today and then she got an email saying it was back ordered so I guess she will be printing for all of us again tomorrow. And no I don't care if we all piss her off because she didn't order the damn toner a month ago.

Then I get to sit at my desk and get some work done. My boss stopped by and said he would see me next week. I said no I will be here Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday because I have way too much to do. He was surprised because apparently its a slow work week and he didn't think I would have much to do. My work level does not correlate to how busy or slow sales are. I'm marketing and IT so I always have something to do.

And then the cats pulled a dead mouse out of the kitchen cabinets. It was in a trap and my husband hasn't been checking them as often as he should. I did not need to see a dead mouse when trying to cook dinner.

My plan is that today will be a better day. I will not have to put on my cranky pants and be a b***h to everyone again. I also think that my health recently has not been cooperative so that I tend to over react to everything. I also do really like my job and my boss. Usually he is very nice and understanding. Yesterday it was just too damn much!

Deep breath. It will be better. And I can always claim too much pain from something and need to leave work for the day.

Back to the real world

I feel very out of touch. Its not that I have been on vacation or anything. I have been home sick since Thursday March 26. That would be ten days ago. I finally felt decent yesterday but apparently still sound horrible. My right ear clogged as well. But I feel fine.

I have a lot to do at work today. Work that has to be done today as well because there is a meeting too. I will be busy. I hope to survive the day and then even make it to the gym - where I haven't been since Wednesday March 25.

In addition to staying home from work, I feel like I have been hibernating and not talking to anyone but my husband. Well I have been on the phone with some people but its not like seeing and talking to people, just being around other people.

I find many ailments isolating, not just colds and ear infections. But anytime you aren't feeling well, you feel like crawling into bed and staying there until you feel better. But if its an ailment that isn't going away anytime soon, your pajamas become your favorite outfit.

But now that I feel good (for a while at least) I have to get to work and enjoy not being isolated. And I don't even have a doctor appointment until Thursday.

Expanding my life

I have a job now where I work 15-18 hours/week. I have actually had it for what is closing in on six years. I really like my job except for one issue. The commute. 20+ miles on infamous Boston are highways with a solid selection of school buses on both ends. I have told my boss the only thing I don't really like about it is the commute so he could feel free to pick up and move the company ten miles south and I would be happier.

I used to work a second job where I worked closer to 30-35 hours/week total. After RA and fibromyalgia combined with evenings and weekends required for the second job, I had to leave it. I sometimes wonder if I found a job which was closer and flexible could I work more hours.

So periodically I take a look at local job openings. I actually applied and interviewed for one last fall which was one mile from home, walking distance for me on a good day. Then they decided they wanted someone full time instead of part time so that was that.

Yesterday I saw a job posting at a non-profit who's cause is close to my heart but its 20-30 hours/week and requires one day a week in the office downtown. I am not sure I am ready or able to commit to a new job which requires one day a week in the city and many more hours than I currently am working.

Then this morning I am more intrigued. I found another job that is 10 hours/week and looks that it is pretty remote. What if I could add a second job which is ten hours/week and has flexibility and does not require regular office time? Could I do it? Could I expand my life and my paycheck to take on another job? Sometimes I feel I spend too much time at home watching bad TV.

This requires more thought. And hope that my health will cooperate as well.

Unemployment after chemotherapy

In May 2007, two weeks prior to my breast cancer diagnosis, I was laid off from my full time job. That is the last full time job I have worked. I was a rocket scientist and decided I could job hunt between surgeries and while going through chemo. I ended up returning to a part time job I had held before - lucky me, they had an opening.

Now it turns out I am not alone. New research (because we always need new research) shows that women who undergo chemotherapy for breast cancer are much more likely to become unemployed. (They didn't tell us about that little factoid when we were making treatment decisions.)

"Dr. Reshma Jagsi of the University of Michigan Health System and her colleagues studied 2,290 women in the Los Angeles and Detroit areas diagnosed with breast cancer between 2005 and 2007. They spoke with more than 1,500 of them four years later.

About 1,000 of the women were under 65 and interviewed both times, and of them, 76 percent had paid jobs before they were diagnosed.

The women who got chemo were less likely to still be working four years later, they reported in the journal Cancer. The researchers found that 38 percent of the women who got chemo were jobless four years later, versus 27 percent of the women who skipped chemo..."

"The findings don’t surprise breast cancer experts. “For the vast majority of patients, side effects are manageable and they can improve after, but some patients don’t feel fully functional for the long term,” said Dr. Jennifer Litton, a breast oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston."

In my case, I worked two part time jobs for a total of about 30 hours/week for a few years after chemo and radiation ended. Since my rheumatoid and fibromyalgia diagnoses I have cut back to one part time job for 15-18 hours/week. Sometimes that is even difficult.

Even with out RA and fibromyalgia, I am not sure I would be able to do my previous jobs again. As marketing director for a medium sized non profit, I was multi-tasking, putting out fires, and jumping through hoops as I hands on managed and over saw an on-and offline marketing plan. My brain is fried. I get tired. My chemobrain kicks in and I have no memory of what I did 10 minutes ago. I don't trust myself to do as much as I used to.

Now I do marketing for a small family owned business. When I took the job, we discussed the fact that it was clearly a step back for me career wise. I told them my life had changed in that I had gotten married and was looking for a job where I wasn't traveling, wasn't managing a bunch of people, and could go to work and go home. That has become even more real. 

Now I leave myself notes all over the place on what needs to be done because there is no way I could remember it all. I have flexibility to go to doctor appointments and for the days when I am too tired. I can manage my schedule around my health issues. And I don't have to worry that I might overextend myself because I can handle my little job.

This new research shows me that I am not alone and there are many other women out there who don't work or work in lesser jobs because of chemotherapy.