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Member
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Georgia
Posts: 905
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Member
Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Georgia
Posts: 905
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Hey there Wolbachc :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolbachc
I would be interested in hearing from people who stopped working because of their neuropathy. How did you know that you just couldn't continue to work? Thanks to all.
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My story is kind of different.....after working for 26 years with the same company I was laid off from my job. This was in Sept 2012 when I was 50......a woman making entirely too much money and my company has done this before. The owner of our company died in 2011 and things went downhill from there. I loved that man......he had a heart of gold. I was there when things were growing and changing constantly. I had a lot of knowledge about the different departments and was a resource for quite a lot of people. We were a family until he died and they started bringing in people that did not understand our way of doing things and bam...it all started changing.....oops....sorry....guess I needed to get that off my chest.
Anywho.....I had (what I call) a routine hysterectomy 3 weeks after I was laid off. Out of the blue my path report came back showing I had cancer......a rare but aggressive uterine cancer. I was already pre-diabetic when I started 6 rounds of chemo. I'm guessing I already had some neuropathy in my toes because they would burn at time after I'd worked all day but I never gave it much thought.......exactly a month after chemo ended I could not walk for the pain in my feet. My PCP said neuropathy, did all sorts of tests and told me to file for disability. So I filed, knowing absolutely nothing about disability, had never really thought about it. I spent months trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with me. Went from dr to dr and finally found a foot and ankle dr that I asked to do a skin punch biopsy......the results were I have no A and C fibers left in my feet. My numbers came back 0 and .06 out of a possible high of 15. This was with Bako Labs.
This has been going on a year and a month and has spread up my legs to my hands and arms....the worst are my feet. Any time my feet are touching something it just stirs the nerves up in my feet. Driving or being in a car riding is very hard. I don't drive now unless absolutely necessary.
I received my SSDI 8 1/2 months after I filed in GA. It was the best thing I ever did for myself. That was one thing off my mind.....a huge thing off my mind. I can now concentrate on trying to get some quality of life back. When dr's see my path report on the skin biopsy they just shake their heads.
At some point you have to take care of yourself first and my time had come. I was very upset when I first filed because I could not believe I would not be able to work. I was laid off with a nice severance and was going to have plenty of time to figure out what I wanted to do going forward which was pretty exciting for me.
Forgive the long story....I've been up all night due to pain and it's finally eased off a little. As least I'm not curled up in the bed in a fetal position 
You have to be the one to make the decision when it's time to stop working. All I know is if it's financially possible for you to do it and you believe you'll be ok mentally not working then go for it. Between the cancer and small fiber neuropathy I can truly say life is short and we should take care of ourselves.
Good Luck and please keep us posted.
Debi from Georgia
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