We moved up here 3 years ago. When we lived in Southern California my husband had a very stressful job. He was driving 45 miles one way. He was also working 12+ hours a day, 6 days a week. He worked there for a year as a temp and then 5 years. During that time, I think he had 2 days in a row off maybe 10 times.
It wasn't just how much he worked, but how he was treated at work. He was expected to do his job, plus the job of his supervisor. When he complained, he was the one that ended up in trouble, and then even more work piled on him. He had his vacation time canceled twice because his supervisor retaliated.
During the time he worked there he ended up in the hospital with Congestive Heart Failure. Because he has a congenital heart defect we couldn't find a cardiologist that knew how to treat him. His cardiologist was constantly sending him to UCLA, and UCLA was always telling us he wasn't sick enough to be there and to stick with his cardiologist.
Anyway, during those 2 hospital stays his supervisor yelled at me when I called to explain that he was in the hospital and weren't sure how long he would be in. Once he went back to work, he was in trouble because he missed work. Literally nothing got done while he was gone.
Finally things hit a breaking point and we decided it was enough and he needed to look for a new job. That's what led us up here.
We assumed that was the reason for us moving up here. It wasn't until a year later that we found out the real reason was so we could meet the awesome doctors at Stanford. The doctors have gone above and beyond anything I could have ever asked for. I knew we found ourselves some great doctors when one of them sat with me in a waiting room so I wouldn't have to be alone.
The only complaint I've had through all of this is our social worker. We've been through 5 or 6 of them now. The first one was in the process of helping us sign up for the NTAF and just quit without notice. So we were given a temporary one. She was awesome. When we explained to her what we were waiting for, she had it all finished for us by the following day. Then they gave us a 3rd social worker. We met with her once and she seemed nice, but we weren't with her very long until they decided she had to many people and passed us on to a 4th. We talked with her on the phone but never met with her in person. Then we were passed on yet again. We've been with this one for about 8 months now, BUT she just had a baby, so while she's on maternity leave we have another temporary one.
I'm still not exactly sure what the social worker actually does. Ours hasn't done much other than remind us that we need to raise a lot of money. Because, I'm not stressed out enough as is, she needs to constantly remind me about the financial part of all this.
Another reason I'll be glad when our lives can go back to normal. Or somewhat normal.
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