[cancer|personal] Another change of status
As of today, I am no longer employed. Instead I am now on Long Term Disability.
For the past ninety days since I stopped working, I've still been employed, but on Short Term Disability leave. Today is my transition date. Much as I never expect to write again, I never expect to go back to work again. Not with my terminal diagnosis and the difficulties of my treatments.
I had my first job at 15. I was working full time by the second half of my college years. Except for periods of involuntary unemployment, I've never not worked.
Now I am being given the luxury of dying in peace rather than dying in harness.
Sometimes I think about what it would mean to work now. There are days when I'm quite functional, after all. Then there are days when I am not. To fill a job today, I'd need an employer that could tolerate me being unable to commute to work, being unable to stand at work, being unable to walk more than short distances at work, being incredibly clumsy and malcoordinated, spending up to three hours per day or more on bathroom breaks, falling asleep at random intervals, having significant short term memory problems, not being able to count or make change accurately, being unable to remember the names of co-workers and customers, lacking deep analytical or critical thinking skills, and taking an enormous number of half days off for medical visits.
Since I'm not interested in being a congressman, there's not a lot of other jobs that will tolerate this sort of behavior. Plus exhaustion. And emotional meltdowns. And and and...
So I no longer work. Another thing which has defined my adult life, lost to cancer.
At least I still get to do interesting and rewarding things with my time, given the limits of my capacity.
For the past ninety days since I stopped working, I've still been employed, but on Short Term Disability leave. Today is my transition date. Much as I never expect to write again, I never expect to go back to work again. Not with my terminal diagnosis and the difficulties of my treatments.
I had my first job at 15. I was working full time by the second half of my college years. Except for periods of involuntary unemployment, I've never not worked.
Now I am being given the luxury of dying in peace rather than dying in harness.
Sometimes I think about what it would mean to work now. There are days when I'm quite functional, after all. Then there are days when I am not. To fill a job today, I'd need an employer that could tolerate me being unable to commute to work, being unable to stand at work, being unable to walk more than short distances at work, being incredibly clumsy and malcoordinated, spending up to three hours per day or more on bathroom breaks, falling asleep at random intervals, having significant short term memory problems, not being able to count or make change accurately, being unable to remember the names of co-workers and customers, lacking deep analytical or critical thinking skills, and taking an enormous number of half days off for medical visits.
Since I'm not interested in being a congressman, there's not a lot of other jobs that will tolerate this sort of behavior. Plus exhaustion. And emotional meltdowns. And and and...
So I no longer work. Another thing which has defined my adult life, lost to cancer.
At least I still get to do interesting and rewarding things with my time, given the limits of my capacity.