Employment vs Chronic Illness: Part 2

One of the first blog posts I published broke down some of the realities and struggles of being employed while chronically ill, and my personal experiences with it. In my post, I spoke about my frustration with my physically demanding retail job and less than adequate paychecks; I shared a few wistful what ifs for the future, and ended the post.

In all honesty, I think its a topic that is too broad and important to confine to a single blog post. Since writing it, my experience has been expanded greatly out of pure necessity. I mentioned that my retail job has started cutting my hours due to the health hazard it poses to me, and since a medical emergency that resulted in an emergency trip and missed shift (I did call out four hours prior), I haven't been scheduled in three weeks. I had zero hours in the past pay period, and I will likely have zero in the next. As someone with bills to pay, copays to cover, and medications to buy I can't survive without a source of income. My parents help me with a monthly allowance due to my situation, but it's still up to me to cover another $100 for my half of the rent, my half of whatever bills crop up, most of my copays, the majority of my medications, as well as things such as food and gas.

In July alone I'll have a minimum of $540 worth of living costs to cover myself (with occasional assistance). On top of all of this, our landlady lied about what utilities were included and we're getting hit with bills we were never supposed to be charge. Our bathroom has been flooding and then draining into the unit below ours for 6 days, we can't use our shower, the whole apartment smells like chlorine and sewer, and I've tried every avenue possible to get it fixed with no luck. As a result of this, and the fact that we have a lot of drunk homeless men sleeping on our hallway floor because the building lock is broken, we're going to have to find a way to get out of the lease as well as a new place.

If we can't get out of our lease, legally, without a fee we would have to pay over $1000 just to leave. A new apartment means another pricey deposit, and a rent and utilities combo that will inevitable be more expensive than where we are now. Add this to my declining health, increased frequency of doctor's visits, and the inevitability of new medications hiking up the cost of my monthly pharmacy visits, and $0 paychecks are not an option.

I mentioned in the last article that I was tentatively considering a job selling cutlery, a less than ideal job that would allow me to work my own hours and work completely from home if need be. I wasn't really sure about the concept of making phone calls and selling knives, but I decided to give it a shot out of desperation. I'm only a few days into working, and it has been fairly stressful, mostly because I spent two day sitting in a 6 hour training seminar, driving 30 minutes both ways. Needless to say, my body did not like the activity and my anxiety did not like the phone calls. I used my chair some, to which they were more than adequately accommodating. In the past three days I've made more phone calls than I've made all year - and I've called a lot of doctor's offices and on call doctors.

Once I made it through the physical strain of training, and got past most of the anxiety surrounding phone calls, I've become a bit more hopeful. Like I said, $0 paychecks are not an option when your cost of living is at least 4 times that of a healthy 20 year old, so I'll take anything I can get. I've been putting as much effort as I can into this job, I've been making and selling some artsy things, I'm signing up to do some transcription work for a little money here and there, and I'm trying to establish myself as an English tutor (which is hard to do when it's June). In addition to all of that, I'm trying to find some part time desk jobs in town that don't require a ton of experience. I've learned that when you're chronically ill and at least partially responsible for the cost of your own care, it's important to find as many manageable sources of income as possible.

This sales job will hopefully be enough for me to cover my rent and bills, along with a few of my medications. Adding in a small paycheck from a part time desk job and I should be able to manage the rest of my meds and some copays. Then with the help of a few transcription jobs, some art sales, and the occasional tutoring session, and I should be able to cover the rest (the rest of my copays, some food, and the occasional tank of gas). It's all a matter of finding what works for you, and then working as many of those options as you can manage without causing too much stress. I have confidence that if I keep pushing through and work hard I should be able to make ends meet without a minimum of 4 mental breakdowns each week.

I'm holding out hope that if I continue to work really hard, I might be able to put aside a few dollars on occasion and actually build up some form of rainy day fund for when things are tight or something happens, a luxury I've never had before (and desperately wish that I had now).

Again, I'm still pretty new to everything I'm doing right now. This is something I'll likely come back to in a few weeks, maybe a couple of months and update on, and likely continue to update on as my experiences grow. I suppose we'll all have to take this journey together.