Thursday 29 November 2007

Its been a strange day.. is it really only 10 past 9.- feel like 12.00pm
totally disorientated with time, guess thats because ive been up and back to bed three times today. think the anaesthetic / antiinflamm dr pumped into me around the areas he was rummaging in my back with the needle , is wearing off, its much worse today .
just been looking through redundancy calculations ( i know i should be resting , but i feel i need to do some more for my peice of mind to help move things on a bit )

To clarify on previous posts ,as I work for a large multinational company( yes it does rub on my ethics) , redundancy would be more than the Statutory package.
just done some rough redundancy calculations doesnt make things much clearer in the way of which outcome ,ill health retirement or redundancy would be better for me.
lots of people have said they think ill heath retirement would be better package, but need to find out what that would look like.
On the redundancy side the difference between calculating the whole of my 14 yrs service on my current parttime salary and prorata (10 yrs full + 4yrs reduced hrs) is £14,402 . quite a difference (big difference to me, its not much to such a large company though) cant really let that slip by without challenging .. got to pass those figures to the union now i guess there is a consultation process happening at the moment , and i know others in different circumstances are raising this. even if it gets thrown out , i think my circumstances are exceptional as i was forced to reduce my hrs due to ill health.
still no joy finding out what ill health retirement pension would look like.

Still pausing at the fork in the road..gathering information

Friday 23 November 2007

Operation cancelled

Today I was expecting to go for more surgery on my back ( factet joint denervation... again!) at 1.00pm today ( the last lot didnt work )
I just got a phone call from my consultants secretary to say that it has been cancelled because they cannot get the nursing staff together! bare in mind this is a private hospital, ( a perk of selling your soul to a multinational company).... my consultants sec is outraged that the hospital cancelled on the day.have another hospital appointment for this sunday.
I havent eaten since 7.00pm late night, , which i will pay for MS fatigue wise ,slept hardly at all and am tense as hell muscle wise which exacerbates my back pain.
Ive now got to explain to work why im not going in work today instead of going to hospital, which is probably what they will expect of me,but im in no fit state.I am on restricted hrs atm ( 3-4hrs ,3 days per week).
Got to make the phone call now which im dreading . im not sure how i feel atm.. but i do know i could really do without all the liasing im having to do with works occ health dept atm, just want to concentrate on of getting out of pain.
what im finding the hardest is to just concentrate on my health, there are so many work issues at the moment .

Feeling decidedly dodgy atm. Ms symptoms are doing my head in, there isn’t one day the same, the ms fatigue is really hard to deal with , and its rare to enjoy a long walk with willow recently as im either in pain or exhausted. I would have never believed that even going up the stairs or popping to the shops could wipe me out enough to need to sleep. At night I wake with numb arms and cramp in my legs and this is in addition to my back condition.

Im suffering cognitive problems too, which may or maynot be to do with the MS, as stress and depression guess cause wont be helping. But it’s scary when your brain won’t do what it used to do. I find it much harder to cope with than the physical stuff.
On the horizon in the next couple of months is the grand-housing conundrum, which I wont go into as its far too complicated, but it may well mean trying to coordinate the selling of three properties to buy two. How stressful it that chain going to be!

Finally after two years of threatened redundancy, we have been told that 400 jobs are going and 20 will remain. (Needless to say there isn’t a chance that I will be one of those 20) That’s fine, im trying to see it as an opportunity to do something different although my health isn’t going to allow me to work in any “proper job”.
As for redundancy, as i may have said before ( sorry)I had to go to reduced hrs about 3 yrs ago because of ill health and despite having worked for this company for 14 yrs in total (i.e. 11 yrs full time), they want to calculate my redundancy on my current salary. Which seems really unfair, it isn’t as though I left to have a child and decided to reduce my hrs because I could afford to, but because I was forced to do so due to ill health. So I’m going to have to try and negotiate a prorata basis for the redundancy, taking into account the 11yrs full service. My boss has asked me on several occasions if I could return to full time but am not physically able to, had I been able to, if I had done so for a few months when we were initially told there would be redundancies on the horizon, I would have redundancy calculated on 14yrs full time.
In fact I know people who did just that. But they could play that shrewd move because they don’t have the health problems I have. It sucks!
I don’t really have the energy to negotiate it, but I can’t leave it. Also Theres a possibility for ill health retirement, no guarantee, supposedly the only time it’s guaranteed is if you are terminally ill. but occ health said they will put a report together if I want them to as I have two chronic conditions
Thing is getting an idea of what that package might look like in comparison to the redundancy. what a mess.. its so hard to discretly get the information in order to work out which is the best option to go for . I don’t want to suddenly find I have been steam-rolled down the the ill health road, if its not the right thing for me to do. I don’t know about pensions and stuff, it’s a logistical nightmare! And im too exhausted to deal with it all. I cant believe im posting this, im not one for airing my problems so publicly and I usually play things down and seem to be coping, but im having a really hard time and I really don’t know how im going to deal with it all.
I guess this is what i started this blog for, a journal for me to express my emotions , and to offer others something. Im hoping i can be a bit more positive soon and offer more than my emotional ramblings.
For now i should just be conentrating on my imminent op, but my head is a whirling and im not supposed to get stressed as i can bring on an ms episode and exacerbate my existing ones!