Back to work

I graduated (PhD in Environmental & Occupational Health from the Zilber School of Public Health at UWM) in December, with a part-time job lined up (the job was offered, I accepted, and I was just waiting for paperwork from HR), and a few leads on additional part-time opportunities to round things out.  And then I got my cancer diagnosis and Greg and I decided that a single, part-time job was a perfect fit with all the treatments I had ahead of me.  I turned down three other part-time opportunities and settled into immersing myself in prep for the one job.  My start date was to be January 5th.  However, when I told them I had surgery on the 8th and wanted to start and put in 20 hours that week before surgery, then make up the following two weeks in the future, they told me to just hold off until after surgery so I could see how my recovery went.  I felt recovered enough from surgery after two weeks, but they told me to wait until my chemo was lined up, and worked with me to choose days and times they needed me so that I could schedule my chemo appointments around them.   And then, when I had scheduled chemo and pushed for a start date, explaining that I was going crazy sitting home and barely using my brain (not to mention that whole lack-of-a-paycheck thing), I received an email stating that there was a hiring freeze and they knew nothing further.

To say I was upset is an understatement.  Without going into much detail, this job was (IMO) a perfect fit for me, combining my passion for breastfeeding (which began almost 20 years ago) with my experiences gained in graduate school for Public Health.  I spent the morning wallowing, and then sprung into action, contacting two of the three jobs I'd previously told "no."  Following the "everything happens for a reason" vein, I got positive responses from both.  One of them is still working out details, so I won't publicly announce it yet, but the other was a return to tutoring at Mt. Mary.  Today was my first day back (I'll be working one 5 hour day a week there), and it FELT SO GOOD!   Even though my schedule was light, it was wonderful to be using my brain and to be around other adults (and while cancer came up, it wasn't the focus of the day).  

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I also think I found the silver lining to the chemo delay.  As I'd posted earlier, my hemoglobin, even a month after surgery, is still a very low 7.6 gm/dL and my medical oncologist is not happy with it.  Today when I talked to her and expressed my concern about delaying chemo so my incision could heal, she said that while delaying chemo isn't ideal, she's happy that we will have time to get my hemoglobin up before starting.  I will get another round of blood tests tomorrow (a week after starting 3 iron tablets a day) and check my iron store levels, and possibly get IV iron if they're not improving quickly enough.  That should help with healing the incision as well as prepping for chemo.  Additionally, if the other job really works out, I'll have a chance to start there and get established before beginning chemo.  
Everything happens for a reason!