Greetings! It’s Wednesday, June 11, and boy are we suddenly experiencing Summer in NC. Sunny days and temps in the high 80’s with humidity… well… just really miserable! 🙂 First world problems. I know!
Today’s post is Part II on the whole “Disabled” subject. 🙁 Not very exciting, but something that is very real to people with MS and any other number of diseases or ailments. It’s an unfortunate reality.
I left off having left my job at the non-profit and moving back to banking. My new role was supposed to have me working on 2-3 projects at a time with a focus on process improvement and efficiency analysis with very little travel. I thought that sounded pretty easy to handle! Well, that stayed true for a little while. 🙂 Rather quickly I was ramped up with 5 or 6 initiatives, one which required some extensive travel. While I enjoy traveling for leisure, traveling for business is/was a different beast! Early plane flights, late nights having dinner with the local business partners… 4 days on the road could literally take me a week to recover from. Only.. in this case… that following week required 4 more days of travel. Not good.
So, my last 6-9 months at work I felt more like a zombie than an actual employee. My boss, who knew I had MS, was very cool and provided some very nice accommodations. Fewer hours, flexibility to work from home, the whole nine yards. Sounds great… right? Well… I still just couldn’t keep up. I was so drowsy at times that I could fall asleep at my desk. And.. trying to remember important details.. just no chance. I was SO frustrated with myself and the situation! I knew, for instance, that this particular job… i would have knocked it out of the park 5-7 years ago. The knowledge that your just “Not as capable” as you once were, is a huge thing to recognize and get over. For me, it made MS something I had to deal with and provide a great deal of thought to… every single day. It was depressing. 🙁
Finally, my wife and I had a lengthy discussion about me just taking a few years off (Whatever taking a “few years off” really meant.. we had no idea). The kids were still all home and trying to manage two careers and four kids… was too much for all of us.. It may have been too much even if I didn’t have MS. That’s for sure. Anyway, I sent my boss a note letting him know that I was giving him my two week notice. I let him know I just wasn’t keeping up and that work was too much based on my MS symptoms. I thought that would be it… and it wasn’t. 🙂
My boss, being the nice guy he was, asked if he could mention to our executive team the situation I was in and why I was leaving. He wanted to let them know, I think, that I wasn’t quitting because I wasn’t happy, but that there were extenuating circumstances. After he did that, I received a note, “Out of the blue”, from my executive letting me know that she was sorry about the situation and that I should consider going on Disability. As she said, “That’s what it’s there for”. She was right.
I guess there’s going to have to be a Part III. Sorry people! These stories just take longer than I think they will. Also, Im still trying to figure out if these posts are too long or.. really.. if anybody cares they ramble on at all? 🙂
One day I’ll figure that out! Maybe!
Take care and next post will be in 3 or 4 days.
Take care!
