FMLA

What’s the latest scoop of Snakelady for those of you who have allowed my bit of chaos into your lives? There is a reason I haven’t written in a month. I’m in a situation that I hoped would end, would go away, and I could write about it in wry 20/20 hindsight. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men and all.

I am on a reduced work schedule due to a physical problem that is causing emotional problems. It’s FMLA leave, which means my employer can’t fire me while I get this sorted out. Why does FMLA feel like a dirty word? I was on the edge of being unemployed this past month and it’s the reason I still have a job. It’s also the reason I haven’t written in a month. I’m ashamed and I’m leery of being judged.

The problem is not a secret and you already know about it – I am sleeping with oxygen at night due to the medically-hyped phrase “nocturnal hypoventilation.” That means I start breathing shallowly when I’m asleep and my blood oxygen level falls to a “significantly reduced” level. The thing is that the oxygen concentrator wasn’t delivering on it’s promises.

I was so fatigued in the later afternoons that I just couldn’t stand it. I ground it out. Then about three weeks ago the rubber hit the road and I had a particularly tiring day when I came “this close” to quitting just so I could look at my horizon and see nothing but time in which my and my bed could be together.

Obviously, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had no plan but I knew I couldn’t face another day in which I was expected to stay awake the whole time.

Hubby and I talked. He suggested I stay home the next day so I could sleep. We talked about me leaving my job and he said we could work with that but I absolutely could not quit without notice. I had to keep it together well enough not to burn my bridges and my professional reputation.

I was in bed for the next 17 hours but got up to call my doctor’s office when she opened. I got incredibly lucky in that she had a cancellation for the next day. When I went in I had a plan. I asked for FMLA to take late afternoons off (my predictably worst time of day). She filled out the paperwork, increased my oxygen at night and helped me get a quicker appointment with my pulmonologist.

It’s been a messy few weeks waiting for the increased oxygen to kick in (it takes several weeks). Poor sleep/”nocturnal hypoventilation” can lead to depression, they feed off of one another, and I’ve slipped into it recently. My psychiatrist prescribed an anti-depressant – Lexapro – but I’m feeling on the downward slope of hopeless so on the one hand I don’t believe that it (or anything else) will help me and on the other I know that anti-depressants can cause mania in bi-polar individuals and I really don’t need another problem. I’m thinking about it.