I want a crystal ball

I'm entering the home stretch of this leave. Four months after getting sick I'm finally able to be awake for normal amounts of time and perform a reasonable amount of activity without exhausting myself. In a pinch I could have gone back to work this week probably but my doctors are on vacation for the next 2 weeks and we decided I'll be safer with hands to hold when I am returning. So instead I am spending a few weeks continuing to get stronger, practicing waking earlier than I have in years, sticking to a strict schedule with meds, and gradually increasing my activity levels. After months of doing very little it is amazing how low my endurance is.

Tomorrow I am going to be negotiating with my supervisor about how many hours I will work. I am trying to arrange things so that I have a 4 day schedule, even if it is a full-time work week. I'm very nervous about this as somewhere deep inside I believe this is going to be really important.

And then I'll go back. Going back means that the most scary thing will or will not happen. I'll find out in the next 6 months or so whether or not I can do this job. Doing this job is one of the greatest loves of my life and if I have to admit that I am unable to do it due to my disability I am going to have to face resentment like I haven't imagined (and I've been quite resentful of thing thing before). I'm also going to face serious financial issues. I earned a master's degree to do this and am used to a salary equal to that, added to being paid in the upper range for what I do because of the lack of qualified people willing to do it. (Rural county, rural region. I drive to the next county to work and don't know their numbers, but my county which covers a big region although it is rural, has only 6 people with my qualifications. Quite a few more are needed to fill the minimum jobs here based on the number of facilities required to hire us). On top of that I have huge educational loans. Losing my job would likely mean having to give up my home and live with my mother, at least long enough to learn to do something else. And I don't want to do anything else.

I know that nothing is going to change what happens. There really are middle areas that I probably will be able to try. Unfortunately one of those scenarios is what I suspect will happen. Currently I work a long way from home in a more stressful and demanding environment than I necessarily need to (the psychiatric part). If things don't work I can request a transfer to a different location that better suits my needs, or I can get a different job. This of course means leaving the company I've really liked working for over the majority of my career, and even that brings up the frustration and resentment. I just want things to work the same as they always have, and I know that not only are there definite changes in place now already, but any sign that my disease has progressed scares me.

So, for the next few weeks I pretend I'm not thinking about this. It's just one of those things you wish you could hurry up and get over. If only I could make it be March 2007....what would we see?