Hello! My name is Jennifer Bertrand. I’m 51 years old with a 26 year old son and happily married to my husband of almost 30 years. I’ve been a pharmacy technician for 20 years and practiced as a chemist for 10 years before that. My household is composed of my elderly, retired parents, my mother-in-law, husband and myself.
In August of last year, my father went into the hospital and was transferred to hospice care upon discharging home. My mother takes care of most of his daily needs and I run errands for them and take care of his medications.
That being said, I was diagnosed with breat cancer in January of this year. I went through surgical removal of the tumor and the sentinel lymphnode, followed by 19 therapy sessions of radiation to coincide with hormone blocking medication. Then come to find out, I have uterine fibroids to large to remove, so hysterectomy is the solution. I’ve also been in debilitating pain and have received no solutions from my doctors. Until, yesterday, I went to a podiatrist to be fitted for orthotics, hoping that would help the pain to subside. I came home from the podiatrist in a non- weight bearing cast on my left leg and an orthotic in my right shoe because both of my feet are broken. I am now on bed rest for six weeks. During all this, I changed jobs, and have no PTO, vacation time or medical leave. I have not been at this new job long enough to apply for FMLA. I have always been the one my family depends on and now it’s flipped. I’ve been working this new pharmacy job since March 4th with broken feet!
I don’t have any extra monetary resources and I’m not sure what the future is going to look like from this point on.
Thank you for taking time out to read my story.
