I Nearly Died: They Fired Me For Being Sick

Seven years ago, I went back to work after a four year break. I returned to medical coding, which was a field that had partly contributed to a previous nervous breakdown, but I needed a job with benefits. I’d worked for the company before and knew that I could at least make money.

For the first few months of work, I felt better about myself. I reclaimed my identity. I became my own person apart from Mom, daughter, wife, etc. even when crappy marriage ended and my condo repairs were a mess, my job provided a sense that I could do something.

I had issues a few years ago with my quality assurance, but I worked hard and managed to settle back in. Everything seemed good despite a few health problems. I knew I skated on thin ice of burnout around the end of 2018, but I kept pushing myself through the flu, severe exhaustion, and finally debilitating anemia.

I had a hysterectomy in June 2019. My quality assurance position wasn’t in a great position. The only thing was if I had a bad August audit, I would lose the privilege of working from home.

I didn’t expect the surgery to take so much out of me physically, emotionally, or mentally. It took longer than expected for my anemia to improve and I had to stay on FMLA longer than planned. So much longer that I needed two iron infusions.

One thing I’ve learned in the last few months is that people who are supposed to know about health are the least compassionate about why you may be struggling with your job.

When a person is anemic, it affects the brain. Literally, my memory and focus were gone. Last year, one of my doctors pulled up my labs from an impatient stay in October 2018 for a severe kidney infection, she said I should have received a blood transfusion. That was a full nine months prior to getting an iron infusion. I was lucky to still be able to walk much less work.

When I failed another quality assurance audit in August, I lost my work at home privileges. However, I was also put on another team — a much more difficult team. This meant learning a new layout, having to up my productivity, and improve my error rate. In other words, I kind of felt like I’d been set up to fail.

Around Christmastime, we were on a pretty tough mandatory overtime, I had migraines almost every day, and I ended up with a nasty UTI. I showed up to work every day. I was on a 90 day suspension. My January audit had zero errors. In February, I received an addendum, which essentially extended the 90 days to March, April, and May.

March and April were fine. I was working from home again, because everyone in the country was. Nerves were frayed and there were talks of furloughs. I had constant migraines and could barely stomach food. My last clear memories before waking up at Vanderbilt and regaining full consciousness stop around the end of April, which coincides with my birthday.

Much of those months is fuzzy, because of what I will get to. I don’t remember the actual details of failing my May audit. I was told about it when I was fired. The day I was going to be terminated, I went to the ER in an ambulance. It was a Monday. By Friday, I was in a coma with liver failure and hepatic encephalopathy. The symptoms of the early stages of hepatic encephalopathy are memory loss, poor judgment, difficulty concentrating, and fatigue. I was in the last stage on that Friday.

From my labs, it’s possible the ammonia had been high for awhile before that week. I likely could have been confused for months. After my 12 weeks of FMLA, I was terminated.

I don’t know if I could have returned to my job anyway. But I wish that people who knew medical terminology would have at least given me the chance to say that my health conditions played a part in my work performance. The dirty truth is that in Tennessee, you can be fired for being sick if it affects your job performance.

I fear this is the new normal. It hurts being treated so coldly by an employer that is in business to provide healthcare service.

Learn more about my former employer in my new blog, Stealers Not Healers.

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