Slice Me Open, Doc (Part IV of the story)

When you've been desperate for a job, and then one gets placed into your lap through a series of miracles, you just don't expect that you are going to get suddenly laid off. When we learned that Terence wouldn't be able to go back to the Academy, I felt like I had gotten slapped upside the head. I just couldn't understand why the Lord would bless us so much, and then take it all away.

It's only because I'm a very shortsighted mortal, I guess.

The miracles weren't over. DPS was planning to let Terence go, and he was told he should just go back to his old job and wait to reapply until after he was healed and back to full strength. However, when Terence explained that he couldn't go back to his old job, seeing as it was in California, one of the "brass" took notice and decided it was unfair to dump him without a means to support his family, especially since he had gotten injured on the job. So he arranged for Terence to be transferred into the records department where he could do data entry. (Bum knee? No problem!) He even arranged for Terence to keep his "cadet officer" title, which meant we got paid the same salary, instead of dropping down to the data entry wages. Miracle #6.

Miracle #7 came when we met with the surgery people and learned that everything would be fully covered by workers' comp. No red tape, no annoying bureaucracy to fight, nothing. We were essentially rubber-stamped yes from the beginning. Terence ended up having his knee surgery performed by an excellent orthopedic surgeon in a very posh outpatient clinic, and we did not have to pay one red cent. While Terence was in recovery, the surgeon met with me and explained that the ligaments in Terence's knee had been so destroyed by the injury that he couldn't even find the pieces. They had to use donor tissue to repair his knee. He explained that after Terence finished rehab, his knee would probably be better than it ever had been before.

But oh, how long and awful that rehab period was. It was hard to be pregnant and depressed with a busy 18 month old and a husband who couldn't do anything for weeks but lay around on the couch while a machine bent his leg back and forth. I'm not a great nurse, and it really wore me down.

When Terence finally graduated to crutches and went back to work in the records department, we celebrated by signing a year lease on a two bedroom apartment. I was so excited I just couldn't wait-- four more weeks and our family would be living in our own place again! But seriously, the Lord must not have wanted me to get complacent about anything. Right after we signed the lease, Terence learned at work that they were debating again about whether or not to let him go. There were others among the DPS brass who didn't like paying extra for a cadet to sit in records. So once again I couldn't sleep-- if Terence didn't keep working in records, there was no way we could afford the apartment. Yet to break the lease we would have to pay astronomical fees, money we didn't have.

Oh, dear. It's a wonder I didn't go into premature labor from the stress. Oh wait-- I did! (But I'll save that for the next installment.)