Yesterday I found out that as of November 1st I will no longer have a job. I have been working for a dermatologist in Cincinnati for 14 years. I started working there when I was 19. There have been many ups and downs there, many employees have come and gone but myself and one other girl who started just a few months before me are the last two standing.
My boss has decided to merge with a hospital and only work a very limited schedule. I can't blame him. He is almost 70 and has been working hard for most of his life. His wife has been working in our office with us for about 10 years full time and she is going to be able to stay home and truly be 'retired' now. I am happy for them. I am also really, really sad. He is going to a group of physicians
and they already have their own office staff so we won't be able to work with him anymore. Even if we applied for jobs there and were hired we would only be working for the hospital, not for him.
They have a child who is a few years older than me who has special needs. They have been my compass in a lot of my decisions when it comes to Carson's care. They have already been where I am now and they have always been very forthcoming about details that weren't pretty in their lives with their daughter. I don't know how to grasp the concept that I won't be able to go to work there and announce: "Guess what Carson did last night?!?"
I am also excited about this big change coming into our lives. This will clear the way for me to be able to explore my options with continuing my own education and possibly choosing a different career path. I'm not sure if I want to continue doing what I am doing now. I have also been very lightly looking into homeschooling Carson so this will be a great opportunity for me to really focus on what goes into homeschooling a child with special needs and try to figure out what is best for him. I have always been very open about the fact that I am terrified of him going to school. Not because I don't think that he would be able to handle it or succeed. Knowing that he is non-verbal and probably always will be it is hard for me to send him to a place alone where I don't know what is going on during the day. He would have no way of telling me if he was mistreated or bored or scared etc. When he is upset or mad he will scream and pinch or scratch. I don't want him to be punished for doing the only thing that he knows how to do to show someone that he is unhappy.
Here's the other part to that worry. Something that I haven't gotten into yet on here. The boy is SMART. I'm not just saying that. He is smarter than his 8-year-old sister in many ways. He has known his alphabet since before he was 2 and has been spelling since then. He spells words that even I have to stop and think about to make sure I am spelling them right. xylophone. ambulance. famished. experiment. Seriously. The kid is amazing. But he is also very splintered. Here he knows probably every list of sight words from kindergarten to 5th grade but he doesn't know not to step into traffic or even something as simple as how to hold a fork.
I know that I will not be able to shelter him forever or even be here for him for his entire life but I want to do the best for him that I can without causing him too much stress or harm. Losing my job is going to be stressful for our family. But in many ways it may also be a blessing.
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