Maybe I Was Washed Out Like a Lip Print On a Shirt.

I'm going back to school on January 17th. Taking Abnormal Psychology, which I *think* is the last prerequisite I need to get into the Adler School of Professional Psychology, my first choice school to obtain my PsyD in Counseling Psychology to become an addiction and substance abuse therapist. I might have to take statistics, which will suck, because math isn't my strong suit, but I'll manage. The psych class meets once a week at night, and I find myself with a plethora of free time during which to schedule classes nowadays.

Why is that? On Thursday night, I was fired from my job at the medical practice after nearly 3 years of dedicated, hard, successful service, coming in when I was really sick, on days after I'd been violently abused the night before and could barely move, managing pancreatitis, and most recently, with a broken tailbone. Why was I fired? Because of diarrhea medication.

Diarrhea medication that this well of medical knowledge honestly, in her heart, did not know was a controlled substance, having taken it myself about 15 years ago during a bout of atomic diarrhea from irritable bowel. As much as I knew about this diarrhea medication was that it slowed down the activity of the gut better than over the counter Immodium.

Too stunned and caught in the headlights to come to my own defense, I sat there, bundled up in my coat after bidding the last doctor goodnight and listened to what was unthinkable, irrational and unnecessary in the presence of three of the four doctors in the practice, harshly including the doctor who is one of my closest confidants and in the absence of the doctor who had the issue with me and the diarrhea drug in the first place.

Thus the medical practice lost the only degreed professional in the front office; the smartest one. The friendly, courageous, witty and polite but firm, unabashedly (at times) anxious, frequently sickly but worked through it all anyway, almost middle aged, wise and mature one who liked to crank up the smooth jazz channel on the TV in the waiting room when the patients left for the day. They lost the one who busted all the patients who were abusing their Rx's because she knew every junkie trick in the book, who's efforts at helping addicted patients went completely unrecognized or appreciated, who struggled through mental illness and was inches away from 4 years of sobriety, who knew who the alcoholic/addict patients were and showed them compassion and understanding they otherwise wouldn't have received in the hands of someone with less colorful life experience and certainly not at the hands of the psychologically untrained.

The practice stated that they will not give me a good reference in order to find another job, other than to say that I showed up on time, did my work and went home. That's more than unfair. And perhaps a moot point if I choose to go to school full-time anyway. My ex-husband told me not to burn any bridge, but at this point, what do I have left to lose?