TLDR: having health insurance tied to employment is killing me slowly, publicly, and I can’t resign without risking bodily harm and discontinuing treatments.
I’m chronically Ill and it’s been a saga over the last 5 years. I’ve been in and out of the hospital, 8 rounds of surgery, and constant nerve flare ups and daily pain and set backs. I don’t have the consistent use of my hands due to neurological damage from my condition. It is incredibly painful and often leads to obvious and public suffering, like my fingers clicking, my face having spasms, or brain fog that has been debilitating enough to forget how to spell basic words and phrases. I experience multi day episodes where I lose blood flow to my arms and the skin sheds and dies on my hands and fore arms. I am notorious for my good attitude, hopeful disposition, and pragmatic approach to stress and life (“if it’s my time it’s my time, I’ve lived fully for 31 and happily, I will miss all of you. Plant a garden and think of me) I run the gardening club and update folks with my porch flowers from quarantine.
I work a high stress, high visibility tech job to retain my health insurance in case I need to go to the hospital and get emergency 6 figure surgery in case of a blood clot or stroke. I get physical therapy twice a week, and I have numerous mental health therapists to process the horrors of being young and chronically I’ll with a rare condition in the United States. My treatments aren’t covered on many other health insurance plans, it’s why I keep working.
Finally, after getting yelled at for the last time by an ungrateful, unreasonable, out of touch rich boomer enterprise client, I tried to resign. I thought I’d have a month of health insurance, and be Able to cash out my vacation days, buy myself a few weeks to recover in physical therapy, and take some time to reflect about what my future holds now that I’ve hit my breaking point. Maybe I can work in a flower shop or a library and just downsize my life. My family and loved ones agree.
I sit down my manager and explain the situation and have trouble holding it together. We’re very close and we’ve worked together for about 3 1/2 years. The stress of my recovery and managing client expectations is breaking me, and my doctors are concerned for my long term recovery and my ability to avoid a truly risky major surgery. I explain my plan, what I hope to do, and what I need. I’m incredibly sad about leaving my team, but can’t rationalize the stress for the cost anymore. He almost starts crying in the meeting.
He’s terrified for me and almost starts breaking down. He warns me that if anything happens or anything changes, that I need to call him immediately. That if I need a job he is happy to leverage any connection or intro he has to make sure I have a soft landing. He feels like he’s failed me, and I can see the hurt in his eyes. He warns me that the company who bought us two years ago isn’t kind to people when they leave, and most likely they will try and do some sort of spiteful thing. It won’t be as easy as I think it will be, and tells me to reach out after I talk to hr. He asks me to reconsider, and to talk it over with my family, loved ones, and doctors.
I take the night to talk to everyone I respect in the world. Parents, friends, coworkers, doctors, mentors, old teachers, anyone who will listen. All agree it’s time to leave. Your health comes first, and they will replace you when you die.
I sit down with HR and learn that they will be canceling my Health insurance the last day of my employment. I also learned from them my vacation time is expiring at the end of the month based off of a calendar that is linked to a little known webpage in a weird corner of the HR website. The inform me that cobra is an option, but can’t verify how much it is. What went from a month of buffer, went to 6 days. I learn vacation cash out are taxed 40%+. I don’t have the funds to resign anymore.
I reach out to my manager, and explain, through a dissociated and manic expression, that I literally don’t know what to do. I tried to do the right thing. I tried to be transparent, honest and upfront. That I didn’t want to let anyone down after all these years working together, specially after how big of an advocate my coworkers have been through my recovery. They’ve gone above and beyond to give me a fighting chance and I just didn’t want to sour those relationships. I’ve prepped all my accounts for the transition, and all are in good standing.
He tells me we will figure it out, accepts my withdrawal of my resignation, and assured me we can find a position that won’t put me in this situation again. Either here, or somewhere else. I can tell he’s shook, and has had this conversation far too many times in the past. Over half my team has turned over while I was on medical leave, and folks didn’t have nice things to say about their experiences working with the parent company.
This was yesterday and I feel broken and embarrassed. Capitalism is killing me while my coworkers watch.