Take a Deep Breath

A goodly amount of crap has happened in the Flashlight household since the end of last year. A lot of time, I’ve just been paralyzed by the drama. Now that it seems to be (mostly) resolved, I may be able to write coherently about it.

Back when I was in the hospital in November/December, one of the things they told me was that they “caught sight of something in my lung” when they did the scan of my abdomen. “Probably nothing,” they said. “We’ll check it again in four months.” Cue me, worrying. Because we’ve certainly been told “probably nothing” about other issues that have turned out to be Something.

Also, when the IV pole fell on me, it caused a deep muscle bruise on my left shoulder. I’m left-handed, and I carry the kids in my left arm. No strain there. I also managed to catch my foot trying to step over a baby gate, and fell… onto that arm. “Probably a torn rotator cuff. Probably needs physical therapy.”

During the winter break, we finally got notification that we could get some other “out of school” help/therapy for the J-man, because for a while now, home time has been difficult. Number of therapy visits are dependent on my health insurance.

Then, in the beginning of January, my team at TCTSNBN was informed that layoffs were coming. We got 2 weeks to stress about whether we were chosen, and then those who were chosen were told. I was one of the chosen. No stress there, right? I mean, I’m just the primary breadwinner AND the holder of health insurance. Not like I could need either of those things!

TCTSNBN, in their infinite wisdom of this round of layoffs (and this round for my team involved THIRTY PERCENT of our US based employees), gave us 60 days on payroll to find another job within the company – or without the company, but 60 days either way before severance kicked in. The severance package was also pretty good, but GAH – health insurance!

I immediately sent individual emails to everyone I’d ever worked for within the company – or even people I peripherally worked for. I readied my resume over that first weekend, and eventually applied for 48 different jobs within the company. I had some immediate rejections (always good when a script tells you “Not Qualified”) but also a good number of “Resume Forwarded to Hiring Manager” replies. One of those jobs was one I probably wouldn’t have applied for because I didn’t really meet the written qualifications, but one of my contacts had sent my resume to the hiring manager, who asked me to apply.

There followed a round of interviews – many of which stopped after the first question of “Why do you want to relocate to random-very-cold-Midwest-city?” – and an interview with the hiring manager who had asked me to apply. THAT one went very well, and at times I felt like I was interviewing the manager instead of the other way around. I felt pretty confident, but it was OVER A MONTH after that interview before I got an official offer letter… and only 6 days before I would have gone off-payroll. Whew!

I started physical therapy 2 weeks ago, because my shoulder had gotten so bad that I couldn’t take a deep breath without wincing. The J-man’s getting 12 hours a week of developmental therapy, at our home, and the lady is awesome with a side of awesomesauce. I had my 4-month follow-up CT scan, and the place in my lung is actually getting smaller.

Included in the results was the comment that the bilateral atelectasis (essentially, it means I couldn’t take a deep breath, probably from the pain) noted before was now resolved.

Resolved indeed. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Posts that hopefully are similar:

• Wherein I Lose It
• In which I say, “Have you ever had a child?”
• Starting to Sink In
• A Journey of a Thousand Miles
• Colon Blow
• Why Do I Run?
• No, Really, I’m Fine!

Tagged as: Coping, Family, Health Care, Insurance, Medical, parenting, Stress, Work