Driving and other questions
Entry posted by lydiacevedo
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I asked to extend my retirement day by 1, that way I could be paid for any unused paid time off I have. HR said that was not a problem.
Friends, family and co-workers are beginning to find out - because I have started talking about it - that July 1st will be my last day. Everyone has the same set of questions ;
1. Why?
2. Are you ok with that?
3. Do you need to talk about it?
They all look at me skeptically when I tell them I am very at peace with the whole thing, even starting to look forward to it. I LIKE the idea of being home all day and being able to keep house, take care of Sam, and do whatever I want to do with myself. I have plenty of hobbies and plans. I won't be bored.
Given the things that have been going on with me, physically, I think retiring is really the best thing for me.
I'm 5.5 months post stroke. A lot of the swelling has gone down. We've found a couple of new "normals" that are a little concerning.
1. My eyes spasm all day long. It affects my vision and focus. I have been given a low dose of valium to help deal with it and told I should not drive.
2. Stress makes the eye spasms worse, and makes me more tired than usual - to the point I can't staty awake. We are evaluating my zoloft dose and may change it again, if the addition of the valium doesn't help that too.
3. It is time for another MRI since I am active and seemingly coherent at all times, but have "lost" periods of time as small as a few minutes and as great as over an hour - there is just plain no memory of the time periods. That one bothers my doctors a little, hence the new MRI and possibly other tests.
So, there I am. The reasons to go ahead and retire are really starting to outweigh the reasons not to. I think, for some of my friends/family, the fact that I am retiring and taking disability is really a bigger hit to them than it is to me. There are still a few who seem to have thought that the stroke was "nothing major, serious, or all that bad." As it turns out, it took more out of me and made more changes then they thought. Perhaps that makes them look at how fragile life really is, and that scares them.
I've experienced how fragile life is, first hand. I'm grateful I have the change to make some changes so that I can focus on the truely meaningful things in life - like family, happiness, love and friendship. The material things can be taken away at any moment, and in the end, we are not remembered for the things we had so much as for the things we did in life, for oursselves and for others.
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