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what I'm stuck on today
Jan. 9th, 2005 02:26 pmI got a letter in the mail from the dim-witted HR department of the large bureaucratic organization that writes my paycheck. (Not "that I work for"; I work for a couple of guys who get the grants that pay my paychecks; these grants are administered through said large bureaucratic organization, including handling payroll. I feel this distinction strongly when the dim-witted HR department starts interfering in obvious ways with Bob and Matt paying me out of their own grant money.)
Letter says "Your request for a maternity leave of absence beginning on December 24, 2004 and ending on April 01 2005, has been approved, pending upon the return of the medical certification." The medical certification form, under "To be completed by health care provider:" has fields for "Serious Health Condition:", "Estimated Duration:", and "Treatment Plan:".
???
Serious Health Condition: Nine months pregnant. Is this a serious health condition? In reality, I started maternity leave as early as I did not because I was unwell, but because a) the set of clothing that I could both wear comfortably and was appropriate for work had shrunk to nearly nothing, but I didn't want to buy anything with such transient usefulness as more maternity clothing; b) I didn't want to start any new projects or expand my responsibilities on existing projects, not knowing when, at any moment, childbirth might force me to abruptly stop anything; c) riding the T to work was painfully rattling my loosened pubic bones out of place, but I'm too cheap to drive to work and pay for the absurdly expensive parking there; d) all work projects slow down around Christmas anyway; e) eating 6 times a day was interfering with work, especially since the cafeteria is nauseating; and f) wanted to get around to getting some stuff done around the house before a baby is added to the household. Oh, and g) tired a lot, probably due both to gaining 25 pounds in 5 months while getting less and less exercise, and to having rampant crazy hormone-induced insomnia. None of this sounds sufficiently medical to rate as a "serious health condition". On the one hand, most reasonable people would say it was perfectly reasonable for me to stop working when I did. On the other hand, trying to justify not going back to work on December 27 makes me feel like all kinds of slacker.
Estimated Duration:
Pregnancy: less than a week at this point, hopefully.
Labor and delivery: a day or 2?
Healing up from passing a bowling ball through a buttonhole: 6 weeks, typically, they say
Not going to work because picking over all those little programming projects seems just so much less interesting than nursing my child: God only knows
OK, so my healthcare provider can estimate the first 3 stages pretty well ahead of time, and they are pretty solidly medical. But the last stage... she can't predict how I will feel or how it will go. And at that point it doesn't have much to do with my own health. It has more to do with the baby's health, although she probably won't have any serious health condition either-- she would probably pull through just fine, apparently undamaged, if I switched her to formula and handed her off to her grandma for daycare. I just don't want to do that. Nor is there any compelling reason I should, work-wise: my boss is quite sympathetic to my taking plenty of time off for this. As far as he's concerned, I can take a leave of absence of whatever length I want. But what does the bureaucracy have to say about this, given that only about 6 weeks can really be "medically certified" as a "serious health condition"? This is bullshit.
Treatment Plan:
Treatment plan? This is where it starts to get really humorous. Pregnancy is a condition that clears up on its own, generally. OK, yes, I will be going to the hospital, and might receive all kinds of treatment ranging from IV to surgery, but none of that is planned at this point, it all depends on how things go as my body works on trying to get un-pregnant on its own. After that: treatment? Does medical science have a cure for motherhood?
Medicallizing maternity leave... this form is bullshit. I'm irked.
Letter says "Your request for a maternity leave of absence beginning on December 24, 2004 and ending on April 01 2005, has been approved, pending upon the return of the medical certification." The medical certification form, under "To be completed by health care provider:" has fields for "Serious Health Condition:", "Estimated Duration:", and "Treatment Plan:".
???
Serious Health Condition: Nine months pregnant. Is this a serious health condition? In reality, I started maternity leave as early as I did not because I was unwell, but because a) the set of clothing that I could both wear comfortably and was appropriate for work had shrunk to nearly nothing, but I didn't want to buy anything with such transient usefulness as more maternity clothing; b) I didn't want to start any new projects or expand my responsibilities on existing projects, not knowing when, at any moment, childbirth might force me to abruptly stop anything; c) riding the T to work was painfully rattling my loosened pubic bones out of place, but I'm too cheap to drive to work and pay for the absurdly expensive parking there; d) all work projects slow down around Christmas anyway; e) eating 6 times a day was interfering with work, especially since the cafeteria is nauseating; and f) wanted to get around to getting some stuff done around the house before a baby is added to the household. Oh, and g) tired a lot, probably due both to gaining 25 pounds in 5 months while getting less and less exercise, and to having rampant crazy hormone-induced insomnia. None of this sounds sufficiently medical to rate as a "serious health condition". On the one hand, most reasonable people would say it was perfectly reasonable for me to stop working when I did. On the other hand, trying to justify not going back to work on December 27 makes me feel like all kinds of slacker.
Estimated Duration:
Pregnancy: less than a week at this point, hopefully.
Labor and delivery: a day or 2?
Healing up from passing a bowling ball through a buttonhole: 6 weeks, typically, they say
Not going to work because picking over all those little programming projects seems just so much less interesting than nursing my child: God only knows
OK, so my healthcare provider can estimate the first 3 stages pretty well ahead of time, and they are pretty solidly medical. But the last stage... she can't predict how I will feel or how it will go. And at that point it doesn't have much to do with my own health. It has more to do with the baby's health, although she probably won't have any serious health condition either-- she would probably pull through just fine, apparently undamaged, if I switched her to formula and handed her off to her grandma for daycare. I just don't want to do that. Nor is there any compelling reason I should, work-wise: my boss is quite sympathetic to my taking plenty of time off for this. As far as he's concerned, I can take a leave of absence of whatever length I want. But what does the bureaucracy have to say about this, given that only about 6 weeks can really be "medically certified" as a "serious health condition"? This is bullshit.
Treatment Plan:
Treatment plan? This is where it starts to get really humorous. Pregnancy is a condition that clears up on its own, generally. OK, yes, I will be going to the hospital, and might receive all kinds of treatment ranging from IV to surgery, but none of that is planned at this point, it all depends on how things go as my body works on trying to get un-pregnant on its own. After that: treatment? Does medical science have a cure for motherhood?
Medicallizing maternity leave... this form is bullshit. I'm irked.
