Thursday, June 6, 2013

A pink slip and the new normal

Good news/Bad news:  Good news first… My office visit at the clinic went well and the molecular results of my BMBX from last week came back clean/negative for any MLL genetic mutations (very good news).  Bad news… My boss, Mike and I had a couple of phone conversations towards the end of last week and he informed me that they could no longer keep my position open for me and that they were having to let me go and needed to rehire the position in order to keep up with the needs of the agency.  Since last week I’ve been struggling with the loss of my job (I have never been let go or fired from a job in my entire life) and I didn’t want to tell anyone besides my immediate family because I wanted to talk to my coworkers first.  This afternoon I joined them for their weekly team meeting and was able to talk to them about being let go from my job and what was going on.  It was so hard (my boss had to do most of it because I was on the verge of tears the entire time).  Thankfully my coworkers are all friends and I know we won’t lose touch.  (They can’t get rid of me that easily) J ha ha ha.

It makes me so sad because I really LOVE my coworkers (we had an AWESOME team) and I VERY much enjoy doing emergency evaluations.  Hearing that I won’t be able to go back to my job really kinda took the wind out of my sails over the past weekend.  I think its because until this most recent development I kinda just felt like my life was on “hold” while I went through the recovery process.  It still seemed like I would be able to just “re-enter” my life outside the house and things would be just like they used to be.  Losing my job was a jolt to reality that things are going to be different even once I’m able to return back to work.  I won’t be able to go back to “my” office (went in and boxed it all up with John this past Saturday and brought everything home and put in the basement for now).  I’ll have to apply for positions again and find something else because I can’t go back to doing ES work until I have all of my vaccinations (few more years).   I’m not angry at all…just sad.   I completely understand the agency’s needs to refill the position and I really hope to be able to return to work for them when Dr. Nash gives me clearance to work again!  I know that the call was a very difficult one for my boss to make and I appreciate him calling me instead of having HR call me.  He reassured me that once I’m feeling better and able to work again he’ll fight to help me find a position again at the agency that will be a good match for me.  I’m hoping that this fall I’ll be able to at least go back part-time and do something with the agency’s intake/access departments and/or help them with some other new/exciting projects that are coming down the line later this year.
 

In the meantime, I’ve applied for long-term disability.  It sounds funny to me because I’m not looking at it as “long-term” and certainly look forward to getting back into the mental health field as soon as I’m able to!  When I called the LTD caseworker last week my status was pending and my boss today that he thought he’d heard that I’d been approved…so we’ll see.  Nonetheless that little bit of extra money will help us pay the bills and keep us from having to dip into our emergency fund/saving too much over the next few months. J  
-Chellie

No comments:

Post a Comment