Hard Choices: My Job or My Health?

One of the reasons I lost my previous job was because I used most of my sick time.  Because of my depression, I recently took a month off, and of course that used up all my sick time and vacation time.  Now I have been having severe headaches.  Besides the constant dull ache in my head, periodically it feels like a knife jabbing into my left eye.  I can't drive, and sometimes I can't look at a computer screen.  I worked despite this for 3 weeks, but the headaches got a lot worse this week and the other day I told my supervisor that I couldn't work, that I had to see a doctor.  She was really upset, and said I should bring in a note from the doctor.  My doctor did tests and asked lots of questions and believes it is tension headaches from stress.  She wrote that I should not go back to work until Monday.  My heart sank.  What if I lose my job?

That was when I realized that, if I have to choose between my health and my job, there is no contest.  I choose my job.  I don't think that would have been true 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago.  Then I would have said, "Jobs are temporary; my body is permanent.  If I have good health, I can always get another job."  Now I know through experience that if I lose my job, I have nothing.  If I have good health but no job, no housing, no food, no health care --for myself OR MY CHILDREN, that is so stressful that my health will not last long.  If I choose health over job, soon I will have neither.  If I have a job but poor health, I have money for food, shelter, medicine, doctor visits, and some of the comforts of life;  I have health care insurance, and I have life insurance so that if I should die my children would have at least temporary relief.  If I can just force myself to keep showing up for work, eventually I should be able to earn some vacation days back so that I don't have to take sick days to recover or to see a doctor.  If work makes me sicker, I have to keep working anyway so that some day I might be able to get better, and at least my kids will be taken care of in the meantime, because if I miss work and lose my job I know that I will only get worse and my children will be vulnerable as well.  So angrily, reluctantly, I choose work over health, because really I have no choice.