I have Fibromyalgia. I've had it close to 22 years now. Its never been so bad that I couldn't work when I had to although I've had fun working around it sometimes. 3 years or so ago I was working at a job that I loved making a wage that was a dream come true for me. I had just married my husband, my soul mate. A giant of a man with a heart to match who believed in Christ like I do. We viewed everything the same way, so much so that you'd think we'd been raised next door to each other and grew up in the same church when in fact there is an 11 year difference in our ages. You can't tell when we're together except in looks that we're that far apart in ages and the best parts are the he loves the Lord and my daughter as much as I do. I was on top of the world until the tornadoes hit at a time when my Fibromyalgia was acting up and I was having trouble with my right hip and leg giving out.
I lost count of how many times I went up and down the basement stairs that night as tornado after tornado blew through Louisville I just know that by the time the night quieted, around 3:30am we went to go upstairs to catch a couple hours sleep before work and I couldn't stand up. I could no longer walk on my right leg. Each time I put weight on it pain in my hip flairs like someone thrust a red hot poker into the socket and my leg collapsed under me. Out went calls to work and appointments were made daily with doctors that didn't do a lot to get me back to walking. Finally on the 3rd day and now on steroids my doctor took me off work for 5 days. I had him fax a doctor's note to my employer's office manager and cried my heart out.
As pain meds kicked in and I drifted into a semi-aware state where I could still feel the pain it registered that the phone rang and I could hear my husband trying to get a word in edgewise with the caller. He walked into our bedroom where I was and he was holding the phone a good 4-6 inches from his ear and trying to interrupt my office manager who was screaming into the phone at him. I even tried talking to her but long story short she stated she was going to lie about us calling in with updates. I was fired and she was going to tell the owner, who we had talked to the day before, that I failed to show up to work and there for abandoned my job. Oh and that doctor's note she had in her hands? It was going into the shredder because she "never received it".
This set my health in a downward spiral that I'm still struggling up from. Why? Because this incident shook my faith and tarnished my opinion of Christian employers/business owners. See the company I worked for was owned by one of my church elders who was also purported to be a rotating deacon. I called and left him a voicemail because what the manager did was illegal. The manager found out about it and while he was out, went in and erased the message. I have these facts from a reliable source, the receptionist who transferred me to his voicemail.
So how in the world does a crises like this put me out of work for 3 years and counting? Stress. More stress then I ever had before. We'd bought a house a month and a half before this and now 60% of our income was gone and in a few months I'd no longer have health insurance to battle back. But there's a happy ending in all this I promise :D in the next post.
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