Time over a promotion

I didn't get the new job I applied for last month in NYC and I have to say I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I wouldn't have minded a challenge in an exciting work environment again, the other hand looks at our crazy home life the last few months and realizes that it is best if my time reminds flexible for the next six months or so as my wife continues to heal from her lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation from her breast cancer surgery in June.  While it is nice I don't have to eliminate our nice leisurely before school mornings I am a bit concerned what this does to my long term career plans as more and more of my position's duties, which are highly skilled, are getting shipped overseas.

I hadn't planned on interviewing for a new position last month, although  my wife and I had been talking about both of us looking for new opportunities in the spring, once she was healed. But sometimes opportunities just happen. The position is a managerial one in a fairly new division of my company. I have been working with them as borrowed talent from before the days that division officially started up and am familiar with the work and the players involved. The previous manager retired and, when her job was posted, I debated about applying for it, leaning against it as I wasn't sure this was the right time for our family. I worried about time, time away from caring for the children and what that added time restraint would do to both my wife's and mine health (less gym time for both plus her ingoing cancer treatments). And I didn't want to commute to Manhattan five days a week again, which is what was originally required.

But then they reached out to me, which was flattering, so I decided to apply. And I am glad I did. It has been a long time since I was excited to go to work and, after interviewing with the higher ups, I saw this may be an opportunity to get excited again.  Career wise, assuming I stay in the company and I and the initiative succeeded, it would be an excellent long term move. Working at the company's headquarters in NYC, not a pleasant semi-back office in the suburbs, would have made me more visible. However, there were personal time issues I had concerns with. 

Some of my fears about time constraints probably wouldn't mattered as much as they could have. On the day of the interview I left the office at 6:15P and was walking in my door by 7:45P. This may sound lousy to most of the country, but is actually almost decent for those commuting from Manhattan. With evening activities keeping my wife and children out of the house until the 7 o'clock hour anyway many evenings, coming home close to 8PM is not as bad as it was when the children were younger and required more hands on dealings (and I will still be able to pick up the slack two evenings a week). Add in 20-30 minutes on the treadmill in the morning and evening and I could have made it work.

But, I still worried what this would mean for my family. My wife has finally admitted how much all the flexibility my current job allows me in taking care of the children, food shopping, taking care of the pets, doing laundry and, just in general, taking care of her in little ways, has helped her get through this. She has time to rest, though never enough, and time to go to the gym. Because I have time to cook, she always has a healthy meal waiting for her to be warmed up when she gets home from her evening gym classes (which she has time to take as I can drive the kids around in the evenings. Though my wife was able to leave work on time, get the kids from their aftercare programs at their schools and still make a family spin class at 5:30P at the Y, while I was in the NYC office until 6:15P, that was at the start of her paclitaxel, treatment and the wear on her body is cumulative. She might have had problems with that by mid-November when I would started in the new position. Still, these short term positives could be meaningless if my job is eliminated in a few years and my resume doesn't have a managerial position in it.

As to the person who got the position, I feel they made a good choice. The person is a friend of mine who had been working on this new initiative for about as long as I. His skills set was very similar and, when he told me he had applied, I thought that this was the one person who could beat me out. Still, the job may have almost been mine anyway. They low balled him on salary, which my company does, sticking to the typical raise they offer to promoted employees, before they upped their offer (they wanted to give a 10% raise calculated from his base pay, he successfully got them to include the OT with the base pay and up it from there -- which still would not be enough in my view).

However, there are some things money and a more exciting work life can't buy -- time to care for my family and time to take care of me. If I'd have been promoted I would have had to head to NJ Transit before the school bus came (unlike now where, even on non-telecommute days, I am home until the bus comes). For our youngest child, this would have meant going to a neighbor's before school or being enrolled in a before school child care program, for our older child, this would have meant being a latch key kid (he vetoed going to a neighbor's like a younger child). Whereas I can currently help my wife get the children fed and out the door, much more of this would have fallen back on her. As to me, I would have had give up a huge portion of my exercise time. I recently took off a large amount of weight through diet and exercise and wondered how having less time to exercise and cook properly would affect that. Now I still get to hit the gym at 6AM and be home in time to see the children off to school and let the healthy foods cook in the slow cooker while I work in the other room.  Things a job in Manhattan would have prevented.

So while I may not have won this day, the interviews made me realize that while I was on the fence about taking the position, I am ready move on to something more challenging closer to home, where I can have the best of both a challenging position and a home life. While the timing is not right now, I want something that will knock me out of my comfort zone for some time as I've discovered that I usually have the ability to get done what needs to get done. It is almost time to move onto the next stage.

Doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide and paclitaxel for breast cancer chemotherapy, oh my!

Her hair is cut short. Her chemo bag is packed. The PICC line is in. Her eReader has been loaded with books. The cancer institute's WiFi and valet parking have been checked out. The laptop lapdesk has been purchased. Child care has been almost taken care of (since we don't have a precise chemotherapy schedule yet we have a lot of contingency plans set up). I guess we are ready.

It has been almost 2 moths since my wife was diagnosed with what we later discovered was Stage I breast cancer with a very aggressive tumor (and I've blogging about it ever since). Due to the aggressiveness of the tumor (pathology report showed a high mitotic (cell division) rate and weird nucleus), she has decided to take chemotherapy instead of just radiation treatment, even though her margins were clear and her lymph nodes negative after her surgery. She likens it to killing an ant hive found in your house. Though the exterminator killed the hive (the tumor), there still may be a few ants  wandering around the house (microscopic cancer cells in the bloodstream) that could cause havoc later. As she put it, it was bad enough telling our children she had cancer now, it would be worse telling them in a few years that it had come back and she hadn't done everything possible to make sure that wouldn't happen. I worry what the chemotherapy will do to her health, both short and long term, but I don't really see any good alternatives.

Doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide and paclitaxel, oh my! doesn't have quite the same ring as "lions, tigers and bears, oh my!" but it does invoke that same level of fear as it did when Dorthy exclaimed those words in  the Wizard of Oz. My wife will be part of a NSABP Protocal B-49 phase III clinical trial where she will be taking a combination of doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide once every other week for 4 cycles (8 weeks) followed by paclitaxel once a week for 12 weeks for her chemotherapy. These are all chemotherapy drugs that have been used for quite some time, the trial is playing around with dosages, seeing if there can be changes. Though this treatment will be rougher than average, she is happy to be in the aggressive trial, and the followup procedures for the next 12 years, as it hopefully reduces the risk of recurrence, but it sure looks like it will take a lot out of her. Fortunately she is young (41) and her heart is strong (according to the tests she had done to see if she could be in this trial).

The thought of chemo is obviously getting to her already. The other day, while taking the children to a movie, she raided the theater's candy section eating more junk in an hour than she has eaten in a month (she was amazed her weight was the same when weighed at the hospital yesterday). Then she went shopping like a mad person to get a birthday gift for one of my daughter's friends that she had forgotten about before arriving home and noticing the 7 on the invitation wasn't for the date of the party but for the friend's age. She told her mother over the phone that she wonders what will happen when the drugs really begin to affect her mind. She keeps expressing fears that she won't be around to see our children grow -- many of the blogs we've found don't have happy endings, which makes sense as the ones with happy endings stop writing pretty quick for obvious reasons.

It's getting to me too, I found my pants were a bit snug the other day. Not really surprised, I've been over doing it with late night snacks lately and I've noticed the wine rack is looking a little depleted (it had been filled with small bottles from Trader Joe's, those can get knocked out with a few glasses). Fortunately, for both of us, we also enjoy taking our frustrations out at the gym and there was a nice 45 minute spin class at the Y last evening to battle our food sins. Today will be an hour on the treadmill I think.

She is upset that she won't be able to do any heavy exercising the weeks she has treatment (blood vessels can rupture from pressure). And she may have to readjust her FMLA paperwork from intermittent. Fortunately we have emergency savings for when/if her leave becomes unpaid. She also decided to get a wig for when her hair falls out, not so much for her but our 11 year old and 7 year old children, who have become noticeably more clingy and are looking to take advantage of our slightly reduced disciplinary standards (Dad, May I have ice cream? Yes. May I have a glass of diet soda? Yes. May I have a cookie? Now, wait just a damm minute!)

Yesterday she had the outpatient procedure to get a PICC line implanted in her chest for her chemotherapy infusions (better than getting stuck with a needle each time). It was a quick procedure that she watched being done on YouTube beforehand (amazing what is available online). She remained awake for, we spent more time waiting in post-op. We talked. She is obviously worried, not so much for the short term, which is looking OK, but for the long term. She is hoping this treatment gives her at least 12 more years (the time frame of the clinical trial), if not more. 12 years would get our youngest into college, at which point I could sell our house (which will be paid for by then) if something happens to my wife (or vice verse as I will be in my mid-50s in a dozen years and something could easily happen to me) and we don't have her income anymore to help our children. We both have substantial life insurance policies but now I am realizing we may be under-insured if something happened to one of us while our children were still young -- I don't know how I'd save for college on just my salary while the children were still young, especially, as a single parent, I would have to make sure I stayed in a non-traveling, flexible work position. She threatened me by demanding nothing happen to me as she doesn't think she can do this herself.

It is interesting how the mundane gets in the way of all this. While waiting for her prescriptions to be filled, I wandered over to the office section of the store and purchased a laptop lapdesk so I can work while waiting for my wife -- trying to conserve time off for more pleasurable activities, or for times when I really need it. She checked out a web site of things to do before chemotherapy and quickly made appointments with her OB/GYN and dentist. We are constantly updating our phone calendars to see if anything bumps into various doctor appointments. Long term plans are non-existent these days. Short term plans are questionable.

At least we are discovering who our friends are. The amount of the support we've been given has  been overwhelming. One neighbor baked cookies for us. Another took our children into her home before 6:30AM yesterday (we had to be at the hospital at 7) and drove our children to camp. One friend has offered to take our son to Six Flags Great Adventure  (near here). Another friend will take our daughter to the shore tomorrow.  Another will have our son over for dinner. Another from our temple will watch our children all day if we have to get chemo on a non-camp day (all these friends have children around our childrens' age, which is how we became friends with them). Our son's karate school, which is a few blocks from the last friend says our son can hang out at the school during morning classes if he wants.

A lot of scary things are about to happen to our young family and I hope we can look back on these days in a year and think, one bump over and done with. But I will tell you the most scary thing I've seen recently, my wife's hospital bill from the day of her surgery -- over $26,000, almost all covered by insurance fortunately, that was only for that day. Looking at the statements from the hospitals she estimated her insurance company has already spent over $50,000 on her and she hasn't even started the chemotherapy yet (plus the years of aftercare). I am getting a better understanding of how easily it is for the middle class to fall  into poverty due to one little medical disaster. Though we are in the top 10%, which with NJ's high cost of living is truly middle class, a $50,000 medical bill would sting. And we're lucky -- we have 401ks we could deplete and a house not underwater that we could sell (we were smart enough not to listen and buy more house than we could afford at the time -- now that we could afford a bigger house we see no need to do so, we were also lucky enough to have bought our first co-op in 1997, just as the NYC area market started to take off). Fortunately we have good insurance and, looking forward, at least for now, don't need to worry about lifetime insurance caps or an inability to get coverage due to what is now a preexisting condition. But that can always change. Man plans, God laughs.