I have exciting news about work stuff.
Some background history. I have been working less than full time for years now. After my Electroconvulsive Therapy treatments, I started working at 50% at Western, and I began getting long term disability (LTD) from Manulife Insurance. The latter were topping me off to achieve a total of 85% of my usual salary. Manulife unilaterally cut me off a year and a half ago, based on their assumption that I’d be fully recovered by then. It was downright absurd to suppose, at that moment, that I could actually do 100% of my job at the university, so I continued at 50% — but now without insurance support for about eight months. Thankfully, I successfully appealed — after paying many thousands of dollars for an independent psychiatric assessment and legal fees — and have been on LTD plus 50% of my UWO salary ever since.
In January, given how my condition had improved on Nortriptyline, I happily moved to 65% workload. Specifically, I increased my research and service duties at the university. (My teaching remained the same, because I am not doing any in-class teaching during the winter term. My teaching duties right now all involve supervision of graduate students.) The plan was to increase to 85% in April, if I continued to do well.
This had no impact on my income, unfortunately. It just meant that Manulife was paying a smaller proportion of salary-minus-15% and Western was paying more.
Now for the good news. I have been working so effectively this winter, what with the warmth and sunshine and stimulating academic environments, that I thought even 65% didn’t reflect how many hours I was actually putting in. I thus sought approval to increase to 75% effective immediately, and both Manulife and Western have agreed. You won’t be surprised to hear that it was nearly effortless to convince Manulife to reduce my benefits! No lawyers required; just an email from my psychiatrist. Kudos to Western, however, for not standing in the way, even though the amount they are paying me will increase yet again. Western is now on the hook for 75% of my income.
What’s more, whereas we had been hoping that I could return to full time work on July 1st, when the new academic year begins, we’ve also accelerated that plan to have me move to 100% workload (and a full salary!) when my classes begin again, i.e., on May 5th, 2025.
I never imagined that I’d be able to work full time ever again. I thought my Bipolar had become permanently out of control, and that I’d just get worse and worse as the years passed. I can’t begin to say how pleased I am that the unthinkable — teaching, research and service full time — may well come to pass in just a few short months!