Lost Job, no one to really talk to about it

I tried so hard to fight my job to let me keep working but they have put me through harassment and abuse so bad it gave me a nervous breakdown. In the past year and a half my Menieres' Disease has become so much worse at a rapid pace. That plus I have lost 80% - 100% of my voice due the fact my vocal chords will not close and on top of that I suffer from extreme depression which disables me as much as the PTSD from the Menieres Disease and now the job harassment has increased that to an all time worse. I don't leave my house ever, unless I drive straight to work and straight back on days I can keep my job, but I don't have to worry anymore about that anymore because January 4 they fired me claiming reorganization, which is just a legal way of letting people be fired at will in Mississippi, at will means for no true reason.
My nightmare with the company began last year when I asked for special accommodations to work from home on the days I could not drive or was too sick to make it to the office. Many other employees do so, some of them are forced to work from home while under medical leave recovering because the company has no cross-training. Instead they put me in what they termed a quiet environment directly beneath the men's bathroom where I was subjected to flushing toilets and men urinating as the accommodation. The then hired a new boss over me and I had to train her, she was trying to sell her home and she made that her top priority over allowing me to train her. She stayed on her cell phone the entire time and when she did pay a little attention she didn't take any notes. She had 0 percent experience in the field she was hired into and my co-worker and I were finding it extremely difficult to train her due to her lack of desire to do so. During my annual review with her and the Department Head I told them I needed to have profusions for my Menieres' because I was staying in constant pain and that as soon as she would learn my job to be a back up I would schedule it, so even after that everything I wrote above took place. After four months she came waltzing in and said "okay I'm ready to learn now, I couldn't learn anything while I was trying to sell my house, you know that". That was a HUGE slap in the face, here I had been waiting months to try to train her for her job and then get her ready to back me up and my co-worker doing the same for her and she had no respect for my illness. After months of training she could not even back up my co-worker while she was on vacation.
I trained her on her job, which she still to this day has difficulty doing, she then said my co-worker had lost patience with training her and that I would be her sole trainer. After finally getting her able to perform the few duties she wanted to learn I asked her to learn my duties enough that I could get surgery and she stated they were too hard. I could simply not leave my co-worker to handle four positions because we had just lost two other employees in our department so she and I were handling four positions between the two of us and I was having to spend half a day doing the managers job because instead of doing her work and then coming to train she would hold her work all day and bring it down for me to do with her. It took a toll on my voice and I began loosing it over time. I kept telling her I could not talk for long periods of time because it hurt to try to force a voice out, she totally ignored me and came into my office for me to train her with no concern. I kept telling her that could lead to permanent damage and it die. Now if I do not speak for about a week at a time I can talk for about 10 minutes before it complete goes out.
All of this deepened my depression to a point I was traumatized. I no longer get out of my house, use to keep my grandkids every weekend but never keep them any longer, just to do fun activities but can barely make myself get up out of bed, sometimes it's days before I do. The longer I waited on my surgery the worse the pain got in my ears, finally I just went ahead and scheduled my surgery. Two weeks before I was going to have it a third co-worker (we were the only three in our department) who did only one job in which my other co-worker and I had no knowledge of because she worked out of state, called in to say she had cancer. She was terminally ill and died three months later. Now my co-worker and I had 5 peoples jobs to do and I had to spend hours a day doing my new bosses job as she called it training. This slowed me down to the point that I could not do my own work.
I began missing work a good many days as my diseases began to get worse and worse. My new manager became very hostile and my department manager would not even respond to me.
On the day our terminally ill co-worked called in my boss became a sheer panic person, she raced into my office and would not leave that day or the next saying over and over she did not know how we were going to handle this because there is no way she had grasped the concept of our job in only those few months. I wrote out a plan of how we would handle it and calmed her down. My only other co-worker other than my boss had to take on the terminally ill patients duties so that meant I was now doing four jobs by myself and training my new boss, who told me she needed atleast a year of me training her to learn the job. I had to cancel my surgery for the time I had allotted for it.
During all this time my personnel department would not respond to me in writing, instead I would send emails about needing to have surgery and they would call me into their office to DISCUSS the situation, carefully refusing to put anything in writing. Except one day I sent a message that I was totally being refused the right to limit my vocal use and that my training schedule and the duties of 5 people were making it impossible to reschedule my surgery. Personnel sent me a letter stating they did not "understand why you can't schedule your surgery" and stating that my health was to come first. I knew that was inaccurate because when a co-worker had cataract surgery that went by my former boss openly humiliated her in front of us and was so cruel to her that she sat in the office we shared and cried all day long. She eventually had to leave. My then department head stated that the company did not stand for people being sick and had no compassion for that.
I knew I would be fired if I left my job unattended, I had seen how they handled that.
Two days later I got a message from the same personnel staff asking if they could call me, I said yes but to remember I had no voice so I could only listen, they proceeded to tell me I COULD have my surgery but that I could not leave the work undone during that time because their work could not be interrupted. I explained that I had been training my boss for several months and they said "yes but not on your particular duties". There it was the truth I already knew. They wrote it was okay but then verbally changed that stance, they did that every time I asked about anything. I began to emailing them restating our conversations.
Finally, I could not wait any longer, I had to have surgery. Again I requested to work from home and again I was told no so I filed a discrimination claim against the company since others were allowed to under those same reasons and I was not. The lady from EEOC called on a Tuesday and they fired me on a Thursday and on top of that they said, verbally, that my insurance was cut off the next day. I soon learned that was a lie, I had insurance coverage until the end of the month, they just did not want me to know. I had just recently had my surgery.. While I was in recovery a contract did not get loaded because my boss did not know how to do it and she emailed me in panic mode, I made a special trip into the office that day, while recovering from surgery to load the contract because, again, I was refused permission to work from home on my laptop during that time. While I was there my boss came in and said she needed me to train her how to do it, I said, I have NO voice and as she had said many times "I don't care you are just going to have to find a way", I told her I was sick and in pain and was only there to load that one contract, she stayed in my office demanding I train her for over 6 hours. For days after I could not even whisper and my throat was in incredible pain, along with my ears.
I have Menieres' in both ears, the ringing is extremely loud in them both and the episodes are frequent, but my depression has also caused me to almost give up. Now I have no job, no medical insurance after the end of the month, no way to pay for cobra and no way to pay my house notes. I will not be able to find a job who will hire me because I was on disability status through the ADA and no company will take that on.
I am a nervous wreck, having major depression and have no clue. I have filed for disability and know it will be denied the first time but I have no choice. By the time I get it started (IF I GET IT) I will have lost my house and everything I own. I am at a huge loss... distraught, confused, hurt and depressed ............. I just needed to vent about this because it is literally killing me.

 

Thank you for all the kind and encouraging words. I had the ear profusions at Shea Clinic in Memphis, TN where you take 1 per day for three days in the clinic. That was in my right hear this past November. Many years ago I had the shunt in the right ear and it worked for a long time, it doesn't help any longer, but that was about 18 years ago.

Moving on: I believe you are correct about moving on, I tried so hard to stay but in the end I was doing that for those not at a corporate level (corporate means better than everyone else in their minds) and it was the most I could do. I'm generally the supporter who takes up for those who cannot stand up for themselves, so I think that was the mode I was in. The company has a reputation of treating people with so little care and I was just one of many.

Disability: This morning I wrote my congressman and they agreed to take an interest in my case though they can't make those who determine the need make those decisions. Just that someone heard my voice does help. After a night of no sleep I found some type of peace today in what my future can hold if I'm just patient and stay calm. I think I really just needed to get it off my chest, it was bottled up for so long I needed to bring it to a fizzle out.

Age: I'm 53 but any illnesses I have were developed far in advance of most expected ages. Somehow I think it all stems back to the Epstein Barr Virus I had when I was in the 5th grade. My mom said I was so active until then and that every since then I have remained tired all the time and never well.

As for thinking I won't get approved, it's more because of the things I've heard and read before, after talking to the social security at my local level this morning I feel much better about that. Somehow I had some misconceptions about the requirements.

I do have two sons and they will do as much as they can while still taking care of their own families. I am going to apply for unemployment, but it's $235 a week here and at the time taxes come due at the end of the year you end up having quiet a bit of taxes from those payments.

As for AT WILL state, once I get all this over with that is going to become a challenge for me, gaining support to make changes in that status for our state. It's more important that ever now that companies are withholding raises from employees in order to woo college graduates and offering them paid internships and free summer travel experiences before they hire in. Plus companies pushing older employees to retire.

As for my M.D. I've had it for many years, it began in both ears and has continued to get worse over the years. I had an appointment in September and when I went back in November I had already lost more hearing. My tinnitus is full time now, never a break, it's not as loud in the morning but by the evening it's much louder. IT has actually become a distraction and makes it harder for me to stay on tasks.

As for moving to a smaller place, my sons have already, apparently, been thinking along those terms for me. They are searching for something small and closer to them so that on my bad days they can check in on me, one lives in another state and the other one lives a couple hours away. One wants to set his garage up for me as a mother in law room and the other wants me to move into a small house across the street from him in the country, I could switch back and forth.

All in all I think this will end up being a blessing. It was so hard to try to work, I wanted to keep working but I could not work forever under those same conditions. I hate they would not work with me so I could have continued using my specialized skills to help my co-workers, but they will have to deal with that backlash, not me. Again, thank you all for your kind words. I think I have a plan now and life feels like the burdens of uncertainty have been coming to a better understanding this morning. I've been on this computer and texting all morning long and just now realized its 2:00 pm. I've gotten a lot of information now, much more than I had yesterday.

As for your edit button......... lol I am exactly the same way, I have to MAKE myself not go back and read, reread and reread again or I will drive myself crazy......