Hurt

 The story we write about ourselves is always magical, even if it's dull.  Right?  We'll live on.  We won't get cancer.  We won't grow weak.  We'll find love and we'll keep love.  Our lives will just go well.  The good chapters are long while the bad chapters are short.  Well, I think I found out that my story isn't that of a hero.  It's a tragedy and I've entered the last few chapters.  The ones where I hurt.  

Most of you have been with me for my good years.  Getting a job as a nurse was amazing and life changing.  Everything changed.  Sure, I could buy and own stuff that I'd barely dreamed of since I was making more than I ever had, but it was more than that.  I was happy.  Life looked like it was going to correct the dark times that had preceded it.  Even when COVID started and my life went to hell, I still had that magical thinking.  Yeah, my diabetes went out of control but that's just messing around with meds, right?   Yeah, I finally got COVID, but I got over it.  Yeah, my arm hurt but physical therapy fixed that before.  Yeah, I needed dental work but I could catch up on that in a year or so.  Yeah, my migraines were getting worse and worse, but they'd get better with Nurtec or Botox.  

I got my diabetes under control.  I got over COVID.  My arm is actually getting better on its own.  My teeth don't bother me and my dentist says they can wait.  My migraines though... no, they didn't get better with Nurtec.  They didn't get better with Botox.  They've gotten worse and worse and worse.  I've kept track of my migraines on and off for years, but I started to keep really close track once I started Botox last year.  Forgive me if my timeline isn't perfect, but when I saw the doc about the 'headaches' and he diagnosed me with migraines, they bothered me often but rarely stopped me from anything.  If they were really bad I'd duck into someplace dark but I don't think I ever called into work or went home early because of it.  That took a couple years and a treatment or two.  Say seven years ago.  Five years ago I was experiencing a couple migraines a week, with maybe 25% of them causing me to miss work.  Three years ago I was experiencing three or four migraines a week with about the same 25% causing me to miss work.  Last October is when it really started to ramp up.  That was the same time as the first Botox treatment.  

Outside of severity, you can count migraines in several ways.  The vast majority of migraines last hours, but they can still affect days.  Most people, if they're paying attention, have a day after their migraine where they'll experience some side effects (headaches mostly).  My migraines before Botox were lasting between 1 and 2 days mostly with the rare one lasting 4 or 5 days.  I think I had one last 7 days before, but I didn't record when.  So you can count the number of migraines or the number of migraine days.  As many/most of my migraines even at that point were lasting more than a day, I counted days.  Each day OF the migraines and one day after.  If the prodrome (pre-symptoms) was particularly bad, I'd count it to.  So after the Botox, the number of migraines I was experiencing went down by half.  HALF!  A BOOMING success!  But the migraines almost totally doubled in length.  My migraines were lasting 3 and 4 days and even extending to 5 and 6 days.  Worse, while my number of severe migraines had grown from 25% to maybe 35-40%, it shot up to 100% after the Botox.  Every single damned migraine was sever and caused me to either call into work or leave early.  It didn't take long for me to read the tea leaves and call in even if I had mild migraine systems before work.  It WAS going to get worse and I was better off not putting myself in that position at all.  

Using January as an example, I had four migraines but the actual migraines lasted a total of 18 days.  The days after bring that up to 24 days.  I know one had a particularly bad prodrome (inability to sleep) so that's 25 days.  25 days in January were affected by migranes.  Some of those went over weekends, and I didn't call in for the days after even if it was hard working with those after affects (headaches and such), but I was still calling in a LOT.  Thankfully I have Intermittent FMLA.  Normally I could just call in sick, but as I ran out of sick leave and even annual leave (getting COVID twice does that to you), I had to use the FMLA time to keep my job.  Know that FMLA time CAN use sick time but when you don't have any, it's just unpaid time.  January is when I saw my checks dropping and dropping in value.  

In March I noticed I was almost out of FMLA hours.  FMLA is 12 weeks off (with intermittent leave it's the same amount but it's counted as 480 hours) every year.  You have to re-up your certification every six months.  So, come April, I had to get my doc to fax in the paperwork (and yes, the state requires the paperwork to be faxed in) and it started a new year for me.  I had another 480 hours to use until April of 2024.  

But the migraines still got worse.  I have a migraines as I write this.  I can't believe how long it's taking me to get these thoughts onto the screen as my fingers just don't follow the orders my brain is sending.  Going back to correct typos is taking forever and I'm sure I'm not catching anywhere near all of the typos.  Anyway, I realized that I was in trouble last week.  I had come off an 11 day migraine. I had three good days and then followed it up with a 9 day migraine.  Both were particularly bad.  The migraine was mild yesterday so I went into work, but filling out my timesheet confirmed what I had thought of the previous week.  My FMLA was fast running out.  After this pay period, I'll have about 100 hours of FMLA left.  And that's doesn't just have to wait until October for me to re-certify... that has to last me until April of next year.  

Fuck me.  

The gravity of the situation is this... if I don't have FMLA to protect me, I dip into unpaid time.  The state HATES unpaid time and it's a reason to get written up.  I'm not just dipping my toe into unpaid time, however, I'm diving head first into it.  I could get into the disciplinary stage in a single week.  At my current rate of use, I'll run out of FMLA in two pay periods.  By September 16th.  

For a while there I laid my hopes on my neurologist.  I have an appointment with him on August 31st.  I could talk to him, tell him how dire my situation was, and hope that my next treatment would work great.  But when I see him, I'll have two weeks of FMLA left.  I have no idea what the next treatment might be, but it's going to take time to get it, start it, and evaluate it.  If it works, that's great, but if it doesn't.... I'm going to get fired.  And I can't get fired.  If I get fired, I can't come back to work for the State.  At the same time, I can't go without money.  I've built up my life on making over $80,000 a year.  I can cut that WAY back, but I can't go to zero money.  Even borrowing money from my family isn't an option as my car loan alone is over $800 a month.  

So yesterday I talked to my supervisor with some ideas, hoping she'd have other ideas.  She didn't though.  She has no idea how I can make this work and believes my ideas might be the best... if they'll work.  

There are three things I can try for.  Disability Benefits.  Long Term Disability.  My 401k.  

Disability Benefits is a basic benefit for all state employees.  If you're deemed permanently and totally disabled the state will give you some money (it looks like it's about $10,000 a year).  More importantly they'll give you your life insurance and your health insurance.  The big IF there is like a knife in the heart... eligibility for disability benefits, for a nonduty disability, requires ten years of state service.  While I started in July of 2013, I was working as a contract nurse for several months.  I didn't start working for the state until October of 2013.  Lemme give you a second to put that together.  That's right, I have nine years and ten months of state service in right now.  I'll ask for it, but I think that might an easy 'no' for the state.  

Long Term Disability (LTD).  I pay for this insurance each pay period and it's costs me about $100 a month since I started.  LTD pays you two thirds of your base pay if you are totally and permanently disabled.  I'd actually hit the cap but that's still $5000 a month.  The catch with this one is that there are two tiers of LTD.  If you've earned more than 184 hours of sick time, at any point of your state service, you are in Plan II.  Under that and you're in Plan I.  Plan II's benefits last until you die or are no longer disabled.  Plan I's benefits last 24 months (or until you die or are no longer disabled).  I never had anywhere near 184 hours of sick time as we only earn 4 hours per pay period and I used most of mine on migraine days.  So at best this benefit would last me two years.  Better than nothing, but not exactly a long term plan.  

The 401k is simple but painful.  I have about $150,000 in my 401k right now.  If I stop working for the state I can leave it where it is, transfer it to another 401k or an IRA.... or I can cash it out.  Cashing out a 401k is the worst thing you can do.  Worse than taking out loans against it.  First, as this is tax free money saved up for retirement and I'd now be using it for NOT retirement, I'd have to pay taxes on all of it.  Just roughly assume 24% so that leaves $114,000.  Then I'll pay a heavy fee to cash it out before I'm of retirement age.  Generally its somewhere between 10 and 15%.  Of the total before taxes.  So that's around $100,000.  Not bad, but losing $50,000 in savings is obviously rough.  But I wouldn't have a choice.  I believe that even if I could get the state to give me the disability benefits and I get the LTD payments, it might be months before I get any of it.  I'll have COBRA payments just to keep my insurance going (without insurance there is no way I could afford my medications).  

I've worked up my life for ten years now.  And I'm going to throw it all down the drain.  

I've been blue before, even when I was happy.  It happens and I've never worried about it.  When life got bad, around COVID time, I got feeling dark and down, but it was still okay.  I was working on the assumption that life would eventually be okay.  But now?  Now I'm down.  Even with just the migraines, not considering any of this end of career crap, I was constantly thinking that I can't live like this any longer.  I didn't want to die, I wasn't suicidal, but I just didn't want to live like that any more.  So I asked my brother to do three things.  First, he took my gun from me.  Second, he made sure all but one of is guns (including mine) are either locked in a case or have a trigger lock.  Third, he moved his .45 that he keeps loaded and ready for 'home defense'.  I doubt I could have got him to give that up, to put it locked away even though we've never needed a gun for anything in my neighborhood in 50+ years, but before he moved it I knew where it was.  If I came to that point I could have walked into his room, grabbed it before he even had time to turn and ask what I was was doing, and end my life.  Now at least I'd have to search for it.  

That's how down I was just experiencing the migraines.  Now on top of that I'm shitting on ten years of state service, quitting working, cashing in my retirement, and praying that either my neurologist or general doctor can write up that I'm "permanently and totally" disabled by migraines so that I can keep my health insurance and maybe even two years worth of money to live on.  

But even in the best case scenario... what do I do after those two years?  What if my migraines haven't gotten better?  

This will obviously be on my mind for awhile.  I need to hear form HR about what my options really are and I need to see my doctors to see what they'll do.  All I know is that I can't continue to work and I have about a month to figure it out.