When my rheumatologist told me today that my blood labs he ran in January looked worse - the autoantibodies were higher - I did not flinch at all. I did, however, weep without warning when he told me how much the new bloodwork he needed to run today would cost our family. He also let me know that his clinic is going to have to monitor me more closely from this point forward.
Together, these things will cost $$$Beaucoup Bucks$$$.
(The January labs were run months *before* I went on antibiotic treatment though, and I have total confidence that my bloodwork is going to look much better this time around because I am feeling MUCH improved!)
This man is the finest MD I have ever met in my life, though - and my husband and I both trust him implicitly. His recommendations are worthy, based on 35 years of treating and healing patients. I know so many women and men that he personally has put into permanent remission from devastating diseases that supposedly have no cure. So, it's time for me to get serious about his treatment and stop messing around with my herbs and naturopaths.
"I'm going to have to go back to work," I murmured, swiping tears away from my face with one hand. "I won't be able to stay at home with my kids."
It's sad that the cost of high quality healthcare is so vast... when most of the "best" doctors I've seen either don't take health insurance, take only PPO insurance, or are out-of-network with our family's insurance provider.
Of course, I'm one of the lucky ones... I actually *have* health insurance.
Still, there is a real line between paying to get good care and bankrupting your own family. I'm not about to do the latter... I would work two jobs in a heartbeat before putting my husband and kids in dire straits due to my own health needs.
I had a few hours to think as I made the drive home alone this afternoon, pondering my own future and where work fits into our long range plans and dreams. What do I want from work? What kind of work do I really want to do? What do I even have to GIVE to a job these days? How will my working part-time affect my three kids?
It isn't that I haven't thought about going back to work before, for different reasons. I weigh this choice all of the time, on the teeter totter of what our family needs vs. what we actually have.
Working part-time might even be good for me, in terms of self-esteem and feeling like I'm "doing" something for the world every day. Would I be a better mother if I had something professional of my own again? Would I be a better wife?
Sometimes life whispers to you to move in a certain direction, and if you resist, it punches you in the face to wake you up and get you moving. Is this one of those moments? Has the whispering been coming at me for a while, and now suddenly I'm punched in the jaw with thousands of dollars of unexpected expenses... necessitating concrete, proactive movement on the job front?
In a way, going back to work would be a relief. Work is the one thing (besides school) that I have always been good at. I excel at being professional, at working very hard and giving my best.
Motherhood on the other hand has been by far the toughest job I've ever loved, filled with many painful chronic failures over time. Working would actually be like taking a "vacation"... I could actually use the restroom without someone holding onto my leg, or eat lunch upon occasion at a restaurant with interesting adults who talk about things other than "Poopoo chicken bumbum-heads" at the table.
Four years have passed since I last held gainful employment, that is... working for an organization not related to my husband. I've gotten used to this child-centered life where everything I do from the moment I wake until the moment I sleep is typically focused on the kids in some way.
I don't even own "work clothes" any more.
Looking back on my early education, I sincerely regret that I took Geometry instead of Home Economics. Never, never in my entire life since the 10th grade have I ever needed to prove why the angles of two triangles are congruent to each other. However there have been hundreds of times though when I've wished I knew how to keep our family on a tighter budget, find a more efficient way of doing laundry, match furniture or improve my skills as a chef.
It may sound terribly old-fashioned of me but I genuinely wish they'd taught us in high school how to figure out whether we were the working mother or the stay at home mother type - and how to manage or juggle responsibilities either way.
And what about career re-entry? Now THAT would have been a valuable skill to learn. How exactly does one dive back into the workplace seamlessly after four years out? I have to wonder if I'm even still competitive, given that kind of a gap in my resume.
My friend Lauren's* mother advised her when she got married to "Always keep one foot into your career" even when taking time out to have children, so that it would be easier to go back one day. I wish I'd had this advice too.
There is no real point or closure to this blog entry, as I anticipate that it will be merely the beginning (and not the ending) of a new chapter for our family.
At least in chronicling my own inner struggle over how to balance children, home, financial needs and personal productivity, I will leave behind for my children a true-to-life record of the fact that I do not in fact find it at all "easy" to leave them and return to work.
Nor do I find it easy to watch my husband struggle valiantly, alone, to meet all of our financial and healthcare needs in a down economy.
I don't know if there exists a solution to this dilemma that will make everyone in my family happy. If we were independently wealthy this wouldn't even be a conversation for us... my husband and I, and our three children ~ we ALL want one parent to be home full time raising the kids. We all believe in having a stay-at-home mom, and I love being that mother.
Sometimes though, it isn't possible to get everything you want. What does Mick Jagger say? "You can't always get what you want... but if you try sometimes / You might find / You get what you need!"
The coming weeks and months may bring changes to our family. Optimistically, each change may turn out in the end to answer prayers we've each sent silently into the world without knowing it. I guess only time will tell.
*Name changed to protect the identity of the person in question.
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