# FMLA for caregivers?



## teesa2you (Jan 16, 2016)

After a huge lump that was almost cm she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She is 25 and does not drive. I will be taking care of getting her to her visits, surgery after care, diet etc. Trying to fill out the FMLA paperwork now. Not sure if I should have the surgeon do it or her primary care doc. How much time is needed off? She will be a week off work, I figured only a few days for me. I can take intermittent time off to get her to appointments and I know she may need some time after the Radioactive Iodine treatment since I hear it makes you feel awful. She is having her total thyroid removed and her lymph nodes above it. I know it will take some time to get hormone levels functioning right. My paperwork wants a return date. Has anyone else filled out this paperwork as a caregiver?


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## webster2 (May 19, 2011)

I don't think you will need a whole lot of time off to care for her. She may need a few weeks at the most. It is not a terrible surgery to recover from. That said, best to you & your daughter.


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## joplin1975 (Jul 21, 2011)

Honestly?

Outside of driving her to appointments, she shouldn't need any real "care." She won't be able to lift anything heavy for a week after surgery, but other than that, she should totally be able to care for herself. As I mentioned in your other thread, I re-roofed the house 11 days after surgery. I missed a few days of barn chores (I have horses), but other than that, I didn't skip a beat. No one was home with me during the day. And, yes, RAI made me feel crappy, but you can't be around her after she's taken the therapy level dose, so you can't really care for her. She'll have to do it herself. Its no worse than taking care of yourself when you have a bad cold or the flu.

My TSH was 121 six weeks after surgery. Which is kind horrible But I never missed a day of work. I traveled and took business trips. Was I tired? Sure. Was I on top of my game? Heck no. But I kept on doing what I normally do. I think the only real care needs crop up if the patient is a primary caregiver of someone (children, a disabled adult, etc).


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## Octavia (Aug 1, 2011)

I agree. Having an official "caregiver" would have been overkill for me.


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## jenny v (May 6, 2012)

I had an official caregiver (my mom) and we were both sick of each other after about 3 days, lol! I only needed her for the first two days, as I was sick from the anesthesia.


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## teesa2you (Jan 16, 2016)

I am just worried work will not allow me the time off to take her to the appointments. I just want to be able to use it for surgery, and appointments. Not to really hover over her, but to be able to protect me from losing my job. Since her surgery is on a friday I have the weekend to be able to get what she needs. But I will have to take her to other appointments post surg and not sure how many days I will use. I can use my PTO, but I have to put the request in 2 weeks before. Each appointment. My company has a strict policy.


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## joplin1975 (Jul 21, 2011)

Well, in that case, I think you need to ask the surgeon's office for clarity on how they plan to proceed with RAI. Will they do it immediately after surgery? Are they going to have her go hypo "naturally" or will they be able to schedule a specific date and use thyrogen? If they aren't going to do it immediately after surgery, what's the time line?

I can tell you my timeline, but it won't really matter without knowing her doctor's specific RAI protocol:

Week one: surgery on Monday, nothing for the rest of that week....I was a bum at home;

Week two: on follow up appointment on Thursday...was still off work...did household projects;

Week three: went back to work...went to the doctor's one for a quick blood draw;

Week four: RAI. I had appointments Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Therapy dose given on Friday;

Week five: Monday I had a post-therapy dose whole body scan, then I was in isolation for the rest of the week...worked from home;

Week six: returned to my regular schedule. I had endo appointments about every six weeks to stabilize my dose.


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## teesa2you (Jan 16, 2016)

Joplin, That is a lot of time off. I think they wanted to wait 6 weeks post surg. I think they will let her be and not be on any medications until RAI. Is it always given at the hospital? I thought she would get a prescription and then just pop the pill and come back after a while to do scans. What did your appointments consist of before the RAI on week 4? She can only take a leave of absence for one week from her job at a call center. Will a week be sufficient post surgery? I know once she gets RAI, she won't be able to be at work in the cubicle sea for a few days. I work in healthcare. And it is very hard to get time off for me since we are so short staffed I think my only option would be to use FMLA to protect my job since I was told yesterday that they would "try" their best to honor my PTO requests. Even though I have 50 hours of earned time coming to me since I rarely take days off or call out. But I would need to put in for it 2 weeks in advance. And we are just hitting the iceberg now. We still have to get results of the CT I am praying the cancer has not spread to other areas or grown into the chest wall. Her lump is very large 6 cm. It sits low on the right side. And they are also removing some lymph nodes as well. The surgeon already told us she would stay overnight one or two days in the hospital and the surgery would be longer than usual because of the size.


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## joplin1975 (Jul 21, 2011)

One week off of work should be fine, as long as heavy lifting isn't part of her job. I can work from home and have a really flexible sick leave policy, so I took two weeks (on the recommendation of my surgeon).

If she won't have meds after surgery, I bet she'll do RAI a lot sooner than six weeks. It can usually happen two to four weeks after surgery. It just depends how quickly her TSH gets above 40.

There are lots of protocols for RAI. It is usually administered by the nuclear medicine and/or radiology department. Some radiologists/nuclear medicine doctors only look at the surgical pathology report to determine how much of a dose of the radioactive iodine. Some radiologists have set dosage levels for staging. I had cancer in lymph nodes so my doctors wanted to do a more comprehensive study prior to my RAI therapy level dose. That involved three consecutive days of appointments for blood work, ultrasounds and the administration of a tracer dose of radioactive iodine. On Friday, they did a whole body scan to see how extensive the spread was - they used the results of that scan to determine my dose. On Monday, I went back for another scan to make sure they had evidence that the RAI was working.


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## teesa2you (Jan 16, 2016)

we have no idea what stage she is in. No one told us. Maybe they are waiting to see the CT tests?


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## joplin1975 (Jul 21, 2011)

Nope, staging can't be done until the surgical pathology reports are in. They can't tell you what stage she is, but they should be able to explain the RAI process they will follow, which will help you figure out your schedule.


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