Short-Term Disability (Or, the Insurance Policy I Didn't Even Know I Had)

I went into the hospital at the beginning of January to get some stitches, because I knew that I literally couldn't do my job with a gaping hole in my forearm. Oh sure, there were some other reasons. For starters, I'd actually been making incisions in my arm in an attempt to locate my artery, because I was convinced it would look really beautiful when I sliced it open...luckily, my lack of stamina as well as my apparent lack of basic anatomical knowledge meant that I eventually gave up and decided to go to church instead, where a friend helped me get to the emergency room.

For another, I knew I needed some sort of help that I just wasn't getting. I was both relieved and devastated when I was finally admitted to the psychiatric ward at St. Mary's. I was relieved because I knew that I was incapable of doing my job, and this would save me from destroying my fledgling career. I was relieved because I'd been having an incredibly public breakdown all over social media and being unplugged from the internet would keep me from posting any more cartoons about how I wished I was dead, and generally humiliating myself any further (P.S. it's really hard to look people in the face after you've had a complete meltdown in public view for a few weeks). I was relieved because I didn't have to spend any more energy trying - and failing - to pretend that I am perfectly fine, goddamit!

But I was also kind of a little crushed inside, in the part of me that cares, the soft squishy vulnerable part of me that I have to shield at all time because weakness is a liability that just isn't acceptable. Weakness means rape, and pain, and all sorts of failure. I just can't stand it. Every time a doctor talks to me about allowing myself to be vulnerable I want to punch them in the face and throw myself off the nearest building.

But I digress.

It was crushing to call my boss every day during the first week and tell her that I was still in the hospital and wouldn't be coming into the office. It was humiliating to be so...I don't know...a terrible employee. I knew that I was protected from being fired because it's against the law to fire someone for being in the hospital, but I still felt pretty shitty. You've got to be thinking you've made the wrong hiring decision when your employee goes AWOL less than a year into the job; it wasn't fair to either my manager or my team for me to so completely drop the ball. I felt like someone had thrown me the ball, it was busy season and they needed everyone to be on their A-game, and I was like 'Oh, this ball? I think I'll just throw it back in your face.'

I hadn't been hospitalized at all since 2006, and my last significant stay was in 2002-2003. I felt like I'd wasted all this time and all these years only to find myself back in the same shit-hole. I was so disappointed in myself, in my failures, in all the things I should have done to get better but somehow didn't manage to get around to doing.

Me and the hospital. I was like 'Please, please, help me. Please save me from myself,' and also, 'I don't deserve to be here, and I don't have what it takes to get better, so you might at well give me the boot and make room for someone who will.'

Anyway, in one of my many conversations with my manager, she mentioned that we'd been using up the two weeks of sick days I had in my bank, and then we'd be contacting HR to get started on a short-term disabilities claim. I was like, 'short-term what in the what now?'

I'd been thinking that I was really fortunate not to get fired, and that I'd saved up money for years so that if I was ever too sick to work I wouldn't end up homeless and completely bankrupt. But, instead, it turned out I had an entire short-term disabilities insurance policy that would pay 75% of my salary. It had come with my job, and I didn't even know it. I work in the insurance industry, and I knew the insurance they were giving me as part of my compensation package was outstanding, but I didn't even know short-term disability was a thing.

I felt so, so lucky. But, when week three of my hospitalization rolled around and it was time to fill out the complex paperwork, I also felt deeply conflicted. I was basically saying, to my employer and to myself, that I was a failure. I was incapable of working. I was worthless, a financial liability. I couldn't even do my job. I have always tried so hard, worked so hard, kept going no matter the personal cost, and here I was giving up. I mean, why couldn't I just make myself go in to the office? I'd been doing it before, hadn't I? I felt so overwhelmed and incapable. I'm not sure I've managed to work out all the things I was feeling.

When I finally did go back to work on a progressive return, and started to struggle with working four days a week, I wondered if I would ever be able to work a full week again, if I would be able to manage it. I was doing the best I could, but I was failing. And then, I went back on full disability benefits to receive rTMS treatment at the Douglas. I realized, 'I am disabled.' It wasn't something I thought I'd ever have to say about myself. I am disabled.

I still struggle with what saying that means. I was disabled. The part of me that's trying to learn self-compassion tells me that it's okay, that it's not my fault I was sick, that this is something that just happens. I was lucky to get through it. I was lucky that rTMS treatment worked well and I could get back to my old activity level without distress. I was lucky. I know that having been disabled doesn't say anything about my character, or my strength, or my worth as a human being. But I still feel somehow less than I did before. I still wonder what value my life has when I can't be a functioning, productive member of society. Sure, everyone needs a little help sometimes, but not everybody ends up disabled because they just can't handle their workload.

I am so, so lucky to be employed at a place that gave me such great insurance, because not everyone has that benefit. I am so, so lucky that my team and managers believed in me, and welcomed me back so seamlessly. I am so, so lucky that HR and my short-term disabilities case-worker were so compassionate and willing to work out a solution that would get me back in the workforce without making me sick again. But I also feel broken. And I'm not really sure when I'll feel whole again.

Clipping My Face On: Getting Back to Work

Every day when I leave for work, I'm secretly afraid that I've forgotten my ID at home. Not so much because I wouldn't be able to get into the office - I'm sure someone would let me in eventually - but because all the women's bathrooms in the building are pass-key enabled to make us more secure. I just can't hold it that long.

But I digress. 

Now that I'm finished rTMS treatment, I've started back at work full-time, though admittedly without the ability to control all metal objects in my vicinity with magnetic superpowers like I was promised. 

I was thinking about it on the way to the train Monday morning, and I realized this would be my first five-day work week since I went into hospital in January. I was nervous, to be sure, but also excited. Not disabled any more!!!  I felt like shouting! Of course, that would entail that people in my office knew why I'd been out...presumably they've been thinking I was kidnapped by aliens? 

The week seemed especially long and insurmountable from the perspective of Monday because I knew I'd be working late on Friday, every week, to make up the time I miss on Tuesday to go to my psychologist appointments. I discussed taking the time unpaid, but my manager made it subtly clear that it was either the opportunity to give the time back every week or using up vacation time. Given that I've spent, like, twelve weeks on sick leave this year (holy crap!!), this seemed fair.

I was all set to make this a post about look how awesome I am, I'm completely better, I went back to work full-time and it was great! There are ways that this is true: I was tired, but it was a normal tired. I'm moving at a normal speed. I'm making good production statistics in my data handling jobs, and I didn't do too badly my first day back on the industrial scanning machine. I was all like I am a success story!! Haha psychiatrists who thought I was pinning too much hope on neuromodulation! I was still having mood fluctuations, but I was so, so much better.

This is true.

But there are ways that this is not true. 

Today was my second day using the scanner this week, and my day started out poorly. I had an insurmountable system error at the first machine I tried to work at, and I couldn't manage to fix it using the process notes. In the end, I had to change machines and ended up beginning to scan late. As I tried over and over to fix my machine, I felt like putting my head down on the desk and weeping, or walking out the door and never coming back. The machine I moved to is not built for someone as small as I am, so I couldn't reach anything. The stacker door slammed on my hand as I was retrieving a document that got lodged in the gears of the machine. Everything was slowing me down, and I knew I'd never make my production target for the day. I was near hysterical tears. I was all like, everything was going so well, and I'm messing it all up, with my moods and my failures. I was thinking, thank goodness I have those xacto knives in my bag, I can go slice up my arms during lunch, or maybe I'll wait until I get home where all my bandaids are, because I shouldn't get blood on people's documents. 

And I was thinking, why aren't I better?

I've always been...something of an extreme person when it comes to myself. I'm very forgiving and flexible with other people, compassionate even, but I just can't tolerate my own failures and weakness. Maybe because I just have so darn many of them. I need to be the fastest, the smartest, the best. And, for a lot of my life, I have been. I expect nothing less than perfection. And isn't my recovery just one more thing to be perfect about, all in one swift go? I want a gold star on my exam, goddamit!

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's not all one thing or another, but a shading and blending of both. I am a lot better. The right treatment has broken depression's crushing grip and I feel like I can breathe again. I am better. But I'm still fragile. My emotions are out of kilter. Sometimes things are too bright, and I feel that edge that comes on when everything is going too fast, when I'm thinking too fast, and moving too fast, and I feel like any moment it's going to spin out of my grasp in a million different directions, and all I want is to stand still. 

I've been sick for at least twelve years. I've accumulated ways of thinking and behaviors that are fundamentally maladapted to living a healthy life. I'm not sure I know how to live a healthy life. There are things I need to learn, and things I need to unlearn, and it's going to be a lot of work, and take a lot of patience, and demand a self-compassion that I still need to discover. I am finally in a place where I am well enough to start doing that work, instead of just treading water or trying to dig myself out of crisis. 

Just because I almost burst out crying at my work station doesn't mean I am not better. It doesn't mean I should give up on moving toward wellness. In the end, no one else could fix the machine either, and my manager had me switch stations with somebody taller so I wouldn't hurt myself. My day got better, and so did my mood. I left the office exhausted and hopeful. 

I am frightened by how much I'm affected when things go wrong. By how fragile my mood is, by how weak and vulnerable I feel. And that's okay. It doesn't mean I'm hopelessly sick. It means I'm human.

And there is so much more that I can grow.

Why Yes, I Bought Myself a Card

One of the things I occasionally do which some people might find a bit on the odd side of the spectrum is that I buy myself cards. Sometimes. Sometimes it's because I like the picture or sentiment but don't have an occasion that matches the card. Sometimes, like yesterday, it's because I feel like the card is giving me something I need: it throws a challenge in my face about something I need to own up to, focus on, or just plain acknowledge. The card speaks directly to my soul, like some kind of voodoo psychic. It's watching me.

The card I picked up yesterday has this message in it:

I know it must be hard

having to stop

everything for awhile

and just focus on getting better.

But whenever you

find yourself

worrying about

the million and one things

you think you should

be doing instead

just remember...

This time is for you.

Your time to rest.

Your time to heal.

And nothing's more important than that.

Because you're important.

I've been pretty focused lately on trying to figure out some way to coordinate all my medical appointments with my upcoming return to work. To be honest, I feel like time is one of the things I don't have on my side. I was thinking I still had a week of 4 days left on my progressive return-to-work plan, but because of the way the director of my clinical trial filled out my medical certificate, my short-term-disability plan is requiring me to return to work full-time as soon as the treatment is completed. And, let's face it, it's not like a single day off would have made that big of a dent. It would have been more like a polite society lady nibbling a cucumber sandwich, and less like the way I tackle an ice-cream sundae. By which I mean a small, ladylike bite rather than an all-consuming bite of humongous gluttony. Beware my ice cream eating mouth of DOOM!!

It's just all so...overwhelming. I have at least two appointments with the psychiatrist at the Douglas once treatment is over so we can do an assessment; with the travel time, I know I won't be able to make up all the hours I miss work. I have to see my St. Mary's Psychiatrist at least once to adjust my medication levels, and probably a few more times for follow-up, which is time I won't be able to give back, either. This all strikes me as annoying, but ultimately manageable, as they are once-in-a-while things.

But I'm worried about the psychologist I've started seeing at St Mary's. That's probably going to be a once-a-week-thing, with me missing at least an hour and a half each time. For me, that means I'll be working an hour and a half overtime on another day, or spread out over a few days, to try and make up the hours I've missed. Every week. Until we've accomplished whatever our goals are supposed to be. I'm worried about it. I'm worried about always getting home late, and burning out a new and fragile remission. I'm worried because I know what disruptions to my schedule do to my mood, and my sleep, and my ability to do all of the other things that are part of my illness management. I don't know how I'm going to handle it all.

If I could work part-time, just until I get some solid ground under my feet, that would be ideal. Financially, I know I can do it. But, realistically, if I decided not to make up the missing time, that would mean a significant rate of absenteeism, and I'm not sure I could pull that off right now after already having taken so much sick leave. I wish I could have had treatment while I was an inpatient. I wish I could have left the hospital and returned to work having actually been better. When I think of all the time this illness has stolen from me this year, I find myself wondering what the point of it was, what it was all for. I worry that I will undo everything we've been working toward.

There was a woman in the hospital with me who was there by court order, and I remember her psychiatrist yelling at her that it was her time to get better, that it was her time to be well. I wonder what that would be like, really having that time, having someone in my corner who wasn't looking for a fix that would prop me up enough to keep going. I wonder if wellness would be worth that sacrifice, the cost and the effort involved. I don't know, I've never really done it, just taken the time to get better, work on all my shit. You'd think I would have done it when I took 8 months of sick leave from graduate school, but sadly my psychiatrist was not interested in exploring all the shit that was coming up and out of me, so I ended up stuck in the same place as before - except that I recovered less functionality. Win?

What I'm trying to say, I think, is that I bought the card for myself because in my fantasy puppies-and-rainbows world this is how things would be. But reality isn't like a skittles commercial, and ultimately I come away finding that what matters isn't so much me as it is my capacity to contribute, to be useful, to fill the roles that I am supposed to fill. I think I can do it: I've done it before. I'm just worried that I won't ever have the chance to really be well, which is - after all - what I was so desperately searching for in the first place.