Power Grid Blog
Community Voices
June 4, 2012 | Rebecca Fontes
I’m a 32 year old Army veteran. I had my son, Jayden in 2004 in Germany. He was healthy and beautiful. His APGAR scores were eight and nine. He was rather colicky, but no major problems. Then, when he was about a month old, he started acting strange. I was in downtown Wurzburg, sightseeing and taking pictures, when I noticed that Jayden’s usual crying pattern had died down some. For a moment, I felt a sense of relief, because he had been crying A LOT. After about five minutes though, I realized he wasn’t just being quiet. He was listless and unresponsive.
I rushed to the ER, which was about five minutes away. In less than 20 minutes he was whisked away by ambulance to the Wurzburg Kinderklinik, a nearby children’s hospital. There I learned that Jayden had caught a nasty strain of meningitis. He was treated there for several months but unfortunately, his delicate infant brain couldn’t bounce back from the damage the meningitis had done. He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at about a year old, and I have embraced the challenges and rewards ever since.
For eight years, I was able to manage being a single parent and being a soldier. This is in large part due to the support systems I had in Germany, (and later on, Washington), and the proximity of Jayden’s doctors to my home and office. When I was stationed in North Carolina, I lost all of that. Daycare here leaves much to be desired and the medical care, though excellent, is very inconvenient. Jayden has several specialty doctors in North Carolina, all several hours away from me, in geographically dispersed locations.
My workload in North Carolina increased tenfold, as did Jayden’s needs. My chain of command was not nearly as forgiving as my previous one. I don’t blame them completely, seeing as I was missing a lot of work due to Jayden’s many recurring appointments. They would let me take Jayden to the doctor, but I would have to come back to the office, many times late in the evening, to finish whatever needed finishing while I was away. When he didn’t have appointments, I barely saw him. I would leave for work before he woke up and get home after he was asleep. I would miss a lot of appointments because of work obligations. Being a single parent in the military, raising a disabled child, was no longer working out for me.
I was given an honorable discharge and a severance check. I was also given a bitter dose of reality. I thought the military was hateful and uncompromising and that being a civilian would make life easier. What I learned was, NO job will let you miss that much work. Part time work doesn’t pay enough to cover day care. I have a nurse-aid that helps out, but that’s not supposed to be considered “child care.” So now, I’m essentially stuck. I can’t realistically work full time and I can’t collect unemployment unless I make myself available to work full time.
Surely, I’m not the only parent in this position. It’s high time lawmakers and companies addressed this. Shouldn’t we, as parents of disabled children be afforded the same opportunities to excel as parents, AND as employees? Why should we have to give up one to do well at the other?
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Comments
Submitted by other competitors at 03:52 AM on July 16, 2013