Note: The following is part of the musings of what I've recorded whenever I've had a thought. I'll jot it down in my phone. I've decided to flesh some of it out into more cohesive journal entries. But in some cases, it's already a full-fledged journal entry.
There have been so many moments when everything seemed impossible. I’ve been depressed, anxious, suicidal, and angry. I’m scared, because I’m stuck in this place where I can’t work and can’t get a job. There are still those times like what I felt in December when I wanted to just die. I don’t blame that on the treatment I received on May 18. I put 100% of the blame on management at my former employer for making me feel like I’m worthless.
I was raised to work. I wasn't raised to be someone who has to rely on others.
When I think about being disabled, I think about my ex-husband laying around all day watching television and playing video games. He told me once how his doctor said that was all he "could do." His mother catered to him, bringing him food and cleaning up after him. I don't want to be like that.
But somehow, my self-esteem has been so shattered that I feel like I'm no longer capable of doing anything. Most of all, I'm scared of just how close to death I got and it didn't matter to management.
I witnessed a lot in my time at with at former job. I watched the supervisor in the department across from ours verbally abuse her subordinates. I came out of the break room one day and she was carrying a knife and had it such an angle that she nearly rammed it into my stomach. If I hadn’t moved away in that split second, she would have stabbed me. That would have been at the least aggravated assault and at the most attempted murder. Given the size of the blade, she shouldn’t have had it at work. I never said anything, because I know how mean she is. Someone brought cockroaches into the group of desks. I’ve seen and heard people talk on their cell phones at their desks when seniors and supervisors were gone. I’ve watched these same people take several calls a day in the break room and get promotions.
I have lot of regrets in my life. I’ve made mistakes, but I hope none of those mistakes ever involved someone’s life or feelings of self-worth. Despite my foggy memories, I remember crying almost every day on my way home from work once I started on the California team until I went on PTO. We started working at home after that. I cried sometimes at my desk and on the way to work.
I remember working through migraines so bad I could barely see my computer screen. There were days I literally wanted to die because I couldn’t take doing that job anymore. I thought about simply disappearing and finding a place to die around the middle of December. And that's not fair to me or my family.
I was afraid to say anything about being stressed or using the crisis line, I might have been admitted for suicidal ideations. Now, I wonder if the stress was pushed on some more than others as a way of weeding out those who were "weak" so they could fire them that way. And even though technically illegal, they still would have done it.
They decided sometime when I was literally hanging between life and death and when my family and friends were praying for a miracle that my life and dignity did not matter. That company made billions last year. They still forced doctors to take pay cuts. I am not saying my work was stellar, but I am saying that the Policy and Procedure Manual and Desktop Coding Guide would be deemed completely inappropriate as universal tools to code 100% of the charts that are billed. I would guess that if the AAPC, AHIMA, AHA, or AMA had all the information about their billing practices including the quotas regarding production, QA, and the attempt to shortcut the CPT manual with the Desktop Coding Guide, management would be stripped of their credentials if not brought up on federal charges.
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