The Fight for My Chronic Dreams- The Chronic Career

The Fight for My Chronic Dreams

In fashion with the prior posts in this series, I want to share with you 5 lessons I learned during this part of my journey:

Sometimes the perfect opportunity is waiting around the corner.
Even bad decisions can have good endings
Choosing to close one door can open up greater opportunities
You should never be afraid to speak up when something feels off
Be an advocate for your own health- no one knows your body and your health better than you

A Rocky Return to the Better

I moved back to Oregon shortly after that Christmas, roughly 6 months after I moved to New York. My aunt and uncle welcomed me into their home while I looked again for work and tried to piece together the fragments of the relationship with my boyfriend.

I was lucky and found work practically right away. The commute was again long and it was another temporary job, but it was exactly what I had been looking for so it was worth it. Before I started working at my new job as a molecular biologist, I took my boyfriend on a trip to Las Vegas, hoping that it would help us patch things together.

Although the trip was fun, our relationship was beyond saving. Shortly after we returned, we decided to take a break, which turned into a break-up a few weeks later. It was difficult at the time, but it gave us both the time we needed to piece our own lives together.

Good Gets Better

For me, it was difficult losing what had been my first love, but I decided that I had had enough. Tired of feeling depressed, frustrated and angry, I was ready to move on and start loving life again. Slowly, I climbed out of my pit of depression, with a good amount of help from supportive family and friends.

I moved forward with my original plan to apply to graduate school and was accepted at a school in New York, but was rejected from a school in Oregon. Rather than return to the misery that for me was New York, I decided to wait and reapply to the school in Oregon the following year.

I re-entered the dating world, eager to move on and try again. Before long, I met the man that would eventually become my husband and father of my child.

Five months after I started working at my temporary job, they offered me a regular role with a raise. I eagerly accepted. I stayed there for nearly a year and a half when I found another full-time job with Dow Agrosciences doing research. It was even closer to home. My career was finally on the right track.

Life had never been better. My career opened up exciting new opportunities and the relationship with my new boyfriend was rewarding. My financial situation slowly improved and I was able to pay down a considerable amount of student debt. I began to rethink graduate school and looked forward to my next journey.

Graduate school

It took a long time for me to decide what I wanted to pursue in graduate school. I evaluated options to get a Master’s or PhD in a Biology field, including the schools I had previously applied to. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t choose this route. I discussed my options with a boss whose opinion I respected, and he encouraged me to think more about getting an MBA, another option I was considering at the time.

Four years after I received my Bachelor’s in Biology, I began taking evening classes at Willamette University’s professional MBA program. The program made sense for me because it enabled me to continue working full-time while taking classes to get my graduate degree. I wouldn’t have to put my career on hold like other options would have required.

Looking back, I’m very glad I chose the MBA. It has opened up many more opportunities and it lines up with my passions much more than a graduate degree in a Biology field ever could have.

The Bad Doctor

Up until the time I started working full-time, I was on my parents’ insurance. I eventually transitioned to my own insurance plan around the time I began working for Dow.

Since my insurance plan had changed, my benefits of course changed with it. My doctor went from in-network to out-of-network and I worried about my ability to pay for an out-of-network doctor in addition to Remicade treatments I received every 8 weeks. Therefore, I made what seemed to be a sensible decision at the time and switched doctors.

It ended up being a big mistake. My new doctor insisted that I should get more medical testing to determine whether I could stop getting Remicade infusions. Trusting that he had my best interests at heart, I agreed. His tests cleared me of Crohn’s disease and he said that I was entirely disease free, insisting that I could immediately stop getting Remicade infusions. Cautiously optimistic, I hoped it was true. At his advice, I stopped the infusions.

The Reappearance of Symptoms

For the first few months, my health was fine, but symptoms reappeared shortly later. I immediately notified my doctor, confident that it was Crohn’s. He was skeptical, but gave me some type of medication that would treat minor inflammation. When that didn’t work, he prescribed something else.

I negotiated with him for several more months about changing my medication as my health continued to deteriorate. Despite changing medications numerous times, my health declined even further. Nothing my doctor prescribed worked and I became sicker.

Concerned about my worsening symptoms, I begged my doctor to put me back on Remicade, it being the one medication that had allowed me to maintain remission. He refused, saying that he needed to run more medical tests before he would agree to it.

I couldn’t afford to get more testing, and I took most of the tests he wanted with my previous doctor, so I asked him to look at my prior medical records. He said it wasn’t enough and held his ground, preventing me from getting the one treatment I knew could help me get better again.

The Fight Continues

I refused to let myself continue down a path I knew far too well, even if my doctor wouldn’t listen. My health and dreams were too important. I did find a way out of my situation, but it would take some time before I fully recovered.

The journey isn’t over yet. My story continues in part 4, “The Realization of My Chronic Dreams.”

This article is part 3 in a 4 part series.

For part 1 visit, “Operation Graduation: Surviving College and Crohn’s Disease”

For part 2 visit, “How I Started My Chronic Career: The Post-Grad Journey.”