I had a meeting with the Head Nurse. This was the same one who called me in for the memory issues 12 months earlier. He said that he was not super-keen on my returning, He had known me during the time when I had Bipolar and I could be irritable and challenging.
I told him that returning was going to be touch-and-go but I was very interested to see what the new environment would bring me in terms of recovery. I also told him that I could not stand or walk very far. I was to start back at 4 hours a day.
My "handler" in Human Resources, "T", was a person whose job it was to get me working. Over the course of time, she had seen it when getting out of a chair was a challenge. In fact, the very first time she saw me in June, I was taking my wife with me to appointments because I couldn't understand or remember everything.
She knew I was sick. It was clear that the hospital was willing to have the question of whether I could manage a medical emergency answered during a crisis.
The program tried hard to help me out. The first weeks I just wandered around doing nothing. They really gave me the time and space to try to acclimatize. Meanwhile they assessed my capabilities. In the end, I was placed on one of the busier wards where sitting was not as likely to occur.
They did this because the patients on this floor were less acute from a clinical standpoint....they were more predictable. With a low patient turn over there would be less new information to incorporate.
At one point I raised concern about a new form and provoked one of the managers who told me, "We are sorry that you are sick. We put you on this floor because you are not functioning well. Just do the work". That is paraphrased and while I can't remember the words it was clear that management knew I was barely hanging on.
I had only driven maybe a total of 20 min in the past year and now I was driving to work. I am not going to dwell on this...there were a couple of close calls that were judgment problems or blind spot issues. I didn't have an accident, nor was I ticketed.
Finally, I got my first pay cheque the week before Christmas but the Union took a cut and Long Term Disability took a cut and I was left with $9. I had spent over $100 just in fuel.
Next my first methylation trial.
I told him that returning was going to be touch-and-go but I was very interested to see what the new environment would bring me in terms of recovery. I also told him that I could not stand or walk very far. I was to start back at 4 hours a day.
My "handler" in Human Resources, "T", was a person whose job it was to get me working. Over the course of time, she had seen it when getting out of a chair was a challenge. In fact, the very first time she saw me in June, I was taking my wife with me to appointments because I couldn't understand or remember everything.
She knew I was sick. It was clear that the hospital was willing to have the question of whether I could manage a medical emergency answered during a crisis.
The program tried hard to help me out. The first weeks I just wandered around doing nothing. They really gave me the time and space to try to acclimatize. Meanwhile they assessed my capabilities. In the end, I was placed on one of the busier wards where sitting was not as likely to occur.
They did this because the patients on this floor were less acute from a clinical standpoint....they were more predictable. With a low patient turn over there would be less new information to incorporate.
At one point I raised concern about a new form and provoked one of the managers who told me, "We are sorry that you are sick. We put you on this floor because you are not functioning well. Just do the work". That is paraphrased and while I can't remember the words it was clear that management knew I was barely hanging on.
I had only driven maybe a total of 20 min in the past year and now I was driving to work. I am not going to dwell on this...there were a couple of close calls that were judgment problems or blind spot issues. I didn't have an accident, nor was I ticketed.
Finally, I got my first pay cheque the week before Christmas but the Union took a cut and Long Term Disability took a cut and I was left with $9. I had spent over $100 just in fuel.
Next my first methylation trial.
