Husband's Depression - the next round
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| Tue, 02-10-2004 - 1:23pm |
I haven’t posted in days and days. Things have turned downward at my house again. My husband has not been to work for over a week. He says he just cannot bear the thought of going there and dealing with the stress. He just left in the middle of a day and has not been back. That was last Tuesday. He went to see his therapist on Friday and had a very long visit. The therapist told him he needs to go to work but after much discussion, they decided that if my husband felt he needed to stay home a few days, the therapist would back him up. Of course, as soon as he heard that, he stayed home.
I just don’t know what to think anymore. He told me last night he might go back to work on Wednesday after he sees his therapist again on Tuesday night for his Cognitive Behavior Group The project he was assigned to at work, the one he was in such a panic over, got cancelled. He’s going to ask the therapist if he can see him in addition to his group. Maybe the combination of these things will help limit his stress level a bit. But, THAT project got cancelled. Obviously, he will be assigned another one and, guaranteed, he will be stressing out over that within days.
My in-laws think he needs to get out of that job NOW. His mother calls him every day, sometimes twice a day, while I’m at work. She told him he should write a letter to his employer and request a lay off. She says he should tell human resources that he cannot do his job because of depression, anxiety, and stress and he feels he is doing the company a disservice and therefore, he requests they lay him off. This way he would be out of there, but would still be able to get COBRA health coverage and collect unemployment.
I’m not sure this would work. I think the company will just say no and wait him out. If he is that miserable, he will eventually quit, they will think. What do you think? Also, I don’t think running away is the answer. He will just have this problem with the next job he gets and the next. In this economy, who’s to say he will even find another job in a reasonable amount of time. I agree he needs to get a different job. I never thought he was the “sit behind a desk and shuffle paper” type of guy. As a computer programmer, he sits in a cubicle all day, staring at a screen trying to make the dots and dashes make sense. He hates it. I have no problem with him doing something different; I just don’t think this is the way.
It is true, he simply does not have the skills required to do this job. No amount of medication or therapy is going to give him any spontaneous knowledge. The job he was hired to do and the job he ended up with are two different things. Most of his stress comes from this fact. He just can’t do it, or do it to his own satisfaction. On top of that, he doesn’t like it. There is no doubt he needs a different job but what? He doesn’t want to do programming anymore.
His biggest concern is that if he goes back, it will all happen again because he can’t do the job. It seems to me if he goes into it with that attitude, it will happen again, and again and again. I don’t know what to tell him, or if I should tell him anything. He says he can’t deal with the stress of this job, trying to deal with his illness and get better, AND look for a new career all at the same time. It does seem overwhelming. I can’t do any of this for him and even if I could, everyone keeps telling me I should stay out of it and let him do it himself. It’s just so hard to watch. And I’m scared. I don’t want to be responsible for all the income. I don’t want us not having insurance. I just don’t know what’s in store for us.

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Also, to help expedite the process, make you sure have names/address of every doctor he's seen for the disease. The S/S board would obtain this information for you, but it adds about 2-3 more months onto the process.
My husband applied and fortunatly was approved the first time around, but he also had to see numerous doctors that the S/S dept wanted him to be accessed by.
Make sure you have sufficient income to cover the long drawn out process of applying.
Katie
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