[Joan M]

Thanks for helping to clarify the issue with more information.

It seems that my case may be a little involved, because the surgeon would probably have to declare me medically disabled, since I'm on short-term disability under his care. But that could be problematic, especially since I stopped taking Percoset two days ago (and now I'm having insomnia until my body gets used to it, I guess). The current disability is related to the surgery, and I'm not sure whether the insurance company would take the advanced-cancer part into account under that circumstance.

Even though I stopped taking the pain meds, I'm still in a lot of discomfort. My main problem is my roughly three-hour daily commute and long working hours. I'm out of the house at least 12 hours per day, so I really have to be ready to return to work. Otherwise I'll be miserable and could also further injure my muscles. My back-to-work date has been changed from September 1 to 14 (and I'm not getting paid because I used up my short-term disability when I had the craniotomy in October and 12 months hadn't passed before the thoracotomy).

There may be a possibility of working from home. Right now I work remotely one day per week due to my early morning Herceptin treatment every three weeks. But working remotely more days would probably also involve the surgeon "approving me" to do that, which means that he can then eventually approve me to be back in the office four days a week.

I'm not sure how my boss would react to my just asking to work from home more due to problems from the surgery. This is complicated by the fact that I work in a newsroom, which implies having to be in the office. Also, I don't have a long track record there -- just under three years, since I had to change jobs when my former employer of over eight years relocated one of it's offices to North Carolina (that was an easy commute with good hours). It's also complicated by the economy. My boss has been threatening to get rid of reporters who don't shape up (I'm not a reporter), where before he would have just told them to get their asses in gear.

And speaking of the economy -- I could go back to work and eventually get laid off, in which case I would have nothing but unemployment and COBRA. If I have long-term disability, I would have 70% of my now so-called "10% temporarily reduced" salary. So it's a big issue. It's not just a surgical problem that may eventually work itself out, and then I can just get another job if I'm laid off. It's a terminal illness, even if I'm not currently terminally ill or won't be very ill for a while. LTD would commence in 90 days, which in my case is October 2.

These choices are very difficult, and I'm still gathering information.

Joan