After my surgery on January 23rd (T9 to sacrum with pelvic fixation) I was on short-term disability until April 23rd, when I started back to work part-time. Most of my work is done in telecommute mode, so is usually done right here at home.
I had been cleared to return to work full-time, and was doing my best to work up to full-time hours when I lost my job. I wasn't the only one. The entire company shut down on July 25th and laid everybody off. It was business as usual that morning; I participated in a scheduled teleconference that morning. That evening, I received a strangely worded e-mail from a colleague asking me if I had "talked to anybody in the company". In reply to my response to her, she told me that everybody had been asked to clean out their desks and hand in their keys that afternoon, and that they were all laid off. So I called a manager's cell-phone, and found out that yes, I had been laid off too, along with everybody else, including him.
Had my co-worker not sent me that e-mail, I would have continued working from home the next day, none the wiser.
So now I'm once again back in the job market. But at least now it's at the tail end of a long recovery, which I suppose isn't the worst timing in the world if I have to be unemployed again.
My 30th wedding anniversary fell in the week after the layoff, so my husband and I celebrated in style with a short trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario; until I was laid off we were planning just a dinner out at home. That was my first long car trip (about 3 1/2 to 4 hours or so) and first hotel stay since the surgery. Fortunately the bed I slept in was not too soft and not too hard; I managed to sleep as well there as I do in my own bed, though I still don't sleep all that well in my own bed.
The day of our anniversary, my pedometers showed me walking about 14,000+ steps altogether. And I learned that I am now capable of walking both uphill and downhill, though downhill is harder.
One problem I did have was with my neck. When we were at Niagara-On-The-Lake, I kept seeing stores that I wanted to check out from across the street. But once I was on that side of the street, I couldn't find the stores I was looking for, I'm guessing because I wasn't able to look up high enough to read the signs from the street below. I hadn't bothered to tell my husband which stores I was interested in checking out; had I done so maybe he would have seen the signs and I wouldn't have ended up walking right past both stores.
My main course of physical therapy for core strengthening after the surgery ended in June. I started a new course of physical therapy for my neck in July. I now find it a little bit easier to turn my head when checking for traffic while I'm driving, but I still have quite a bit of neck pain every day. I don't know that the neck pain will completely resolve anytime soon, but it is definitely getting somewhat better. There is still a limited range of motion when I turn my neck to the left, but at least now I can for the most part check for traffic coming from the left without having to hold my neck with my left hand to ease the strong pain that I was feeling previously.
And now I of course still have the exercises for core strengthening to continue with, along with a new set of exercises for my neck. There are so many exercises to keep track of now that I ended up putting them all in Outlook so that I don't forget anything. I won't have time for all those exercises once I manage to find another job, because I will most definitely have to start a new job in full-time mode from the get-go. But for now I guess they will help with the stress and give me something to do, along with job hunting.
Had my old job continued, I would have soon started having to drive an hour each way to work on the next phase of the contract that kept me so busy right before the surgery. But now, given my field (computational linguistics) and the relative lack of local players in that field, I will most likely be getting another telecommute position, so will most likely continue to work out of my house. I guess that means I can use the various exercises as short breaks so that I'm not working too long continuously.
But first I have to find another job.... I had a nice phone interview on Friday; hopefully that will lead to an offer.
-- Mary
I had been cleared to return to work full-time, and was doing my best to work up to full-time hours when I lost my job. I wasn't the only one. The entire company shut down on July 25th and laid everybody off. It was business as usual that morning; I participated in a scheduled teleconference that morning. That evening, I received a strangely worded e-mail from a colleague asking me if I had "talked to anybody in the company". In reply to my response to her, she told me that everybody had been asked to clean out their desks and hand in their keys that afternoon, and that they were all laid off. So I called a manager's cell-phone, and found out that yes, I had been laid off too, along with everybody else, including him.
Had my co-worker not sent me that e-mail, I would have continued working from home the next day, none the wiser.
So now I'm once again back in the job market. But at least now it's at the tail end of a long recovery, which I suppose isn't the worst timing in the world if I have to be unemployed again.
My 30th wedding anniversary fell in the week after the layoff, so my husband and I celebrated in style with a short trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario; until I was laid off we were planning just a dinner out at home. That was my first long car trip (about 3 1/2 to 4 hours or so) and first hotel stay since the surgery. Fortunately the bed I slept in was not too soft and not too hard; I managed to sleep as well there as I do in my own bed, though I still don't sleep all that well in my own bed.
The day of our anniversary, my pedometers showed me walking about 14,000+ steps altogether. And I learned that I am now capable of walking both uphill and downhill, though downhill is harder.
One problem I did have was with my neck. When we were at Niagara-On-The-Lake, I kept seeing stores that I wanted to check out from across the street. But once I was on that side of the street, I couldn't find the stores I was looking for, I'm guessing because I wasn't able to look up high enough to read the signs from the street below. I hadn't bothered to tell my husband which stores I was interested in checking out; had I done so maybe he would have seen the signs and I wouldn't have ended up walking right past both stores.
My main course of physical therapy for core strengthening after the surgery ended in June. I started a new course of physical therapy for my neck in July. I now find it a little bit easier to turn my head when checking for traffic while I'm driving, but I still have quite a bit of neck pain every day. I don't know that the neck pain will completely resolve anytime soon, but it is definitely getting somewhat better. There is still a limited range of motion when I turn my neck to the left, but at least now I can for the most part check for traffic coming from the left without having to hold my neck with my left hand to ease the strong pain that I was feeling previously.
And now I of course still have the exercises for core strengthening to continue with, along with a new set of exercises for my neck. There are so many exercises to keep track of now that I ended up putting them all in Outlook so that I don't forget anything. I won't have time for all those exercises once I manage to find another job, because I will most definitely have to start a new job in full-time mode from the get-go. But for now I guess they will help with the stress and give me something to do, along with job hunting.
Had my old job continued, I would have soon started having to drive an hour each way to work on the next phase of the contract that kept me so busy right before the surgery. But now, given my field (computational linguistics) and the relative lack of local players in that field, I will most likely be getting another telecommute position, so will most likely continue to work out of my house. I guess that means I can use the various exercises as short breaks so that I'm not working too long continuously.
But first I have to find another job.... I had a nice phone interview on Friday; hopefully that will lead to an offer.
-- Mary
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