As I’ve talked about before, time off is alway a tricky problem when you have any chronic illness. If you are fortunate enough to have your symptoms under control and have a care regimen that allows you to work in a traditional setting, you may struggle a lot with this topic – I know I do. It is a source of constant stress and anxiety. I feel like nobody else my age thinks so much about the number of sick days and vacation days they have.
As you may know, I am a novice in the work force and in the MS club. My symptoms began about a year ago, only 4 months after graduating from college. At this point, I had zero time off from my job. I was working for a pretty big nonprofit in Boston with the dreaded “probationary period”. This meant that I had no sick days or vacation days until I had worked there for six months. I was only 3 months into my job when the symptoms started. I missed about a week of work in October as I went to doctor’s appointments every day, slowly working my way to a diagnosis. Then I missed another week in January as I fought through my first “episode” since the original one. This time it was brought on by a massive fever, so it was a long recovery. The steroids took me out for another day, since the withdrawal made me feel like a 90 year old with skin way too fragile to go on public transportation to the office. When you added it all up, I had used all my sick and vacation time before December, when I finished my probationary period. So my manager and I had to work through it. I worked from home a LOT, which I was lucky to be able to do. I worked extra hours when I could, and I felt extreme work guilt, to the point of crying constantly about missing work. My direct co-worker, the girl who had the exact same job description and was hired at the same time, never missed a day. In fact, she took her first day off recently and texted me to tell me about it. Work guilt is a bitch.
When I left that job to move closer to my family and my doctors, it was time to start a new job and go through another probationary period. This one was three months for sick time and six months for vacation time. Regardless, I was forever stressed during those three months. Every tingle stressed me out. Luckily, I made it through without missing a day. Wait…no…I missed one day but it was planned! The first week of my new job I missed a whole day for my Ocrevus infusion…we can’t be perfect!
I think that time off will always be a stressful issue in my life. I am always trying to prove myself and advance in my career. I want to be the perfect employee, but I have MS. I have many friends who take days off when they’re feeling a little off, or take the whole day when they have a quick doctor’s appointment. I feel like I can’t do that, I can’t waste what time I have. But this past year has taught me how important health, mental and physical, are to being “successful” in life. I will always put my health first when it comes down to it, but I will probably cry with work guilt the entire time.
MS and Mimosas 