In 2014, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Cancer. It was caught before, but I delayed treatment quite a bit, hoping that I would heal myself through diet and exercise I never got time for. I was too busy trying to find love before death.
I didn't die though. In fact, I am doing a lot better, but now I have to come to terms with Living again. See, while I was sick, I racked up a bunch of debt because, in lieu of letting me work from home (as promised), since I wasn't tenured I had to dock my paychecks.
So sure I survived, but my shiny squeaky clean financials were destroyed beyond repair. I got over my fear of death pretty fast. I wasn't exactly happy, though I did enjoy the occasional increase in Facebook likes for my cancer pics. However getting my life back together after, has been a long hard process. I don't have a spouse to help, and my family is dirt broke.
I forgot what interviewing was like. The least competent person to judge if you can do your job giving you an interview. Scrutinizing every mistake. Looking for a reason to filter you out. Wondering how I've spent 10 years doing the same job, but can't get a Senior level position. I never imagined the hardest part of cancer was after the operations, and chemotherapy.
I went from disposable income to disposable in under a year. I'm not sad about my situation. Just disappointed in how society treats the sick. My advice to anyone else in a similar situation would be to work with your counseling staff more. They told me that they had lawyers for situations like what happened at my job, but I didn't want to go the litigious route. Given the ability to do it all over, I would have been just as uncaring as my managers and went to court. I highly recommend you do, because the noble alternative was not a wise choice.