During the height of the pandemic my clinic started giving out 26 take homes to the individuals who qualified for them. When I say qualify I mean clients who already had weekly takes homes or ones who were currently earning their take homes and had at least 3. You had to have no dirty urines for the last 6 months as wells. Others who didn’t fall under that umbrella had to go in ever day. Once they started giving out the 26 take homes they would randomly call you in monthly to check your bottles. Now this only happened to me once for some reason. I wasn’t called in every month like most other ppl. Unfortunately it happened when I was working in another county taking care of Covid positive residents. I’m a nursing assistant and we were asked to help out at another facility because more then half of their staff was out with Covid. My facility didn’t have any positive cases at this time and they were offering a lot of money to work at this other facility. I chose to do it not only for the pay but because I wanted to see what it was like working in a Covid positive environment before it got to my facility. I’m glad I did too because with a month of my return we had positive cases and I was one of the only Cnas who knew exactly what to do and how to handle it. I contacted the clinic and let them know a week prior so they knew I wasn’t going to be available to come in. I made sure my employer wrote a letter stating where I was going to be staying and working, I sent that into them as well. The med nurse called me the morning I was leaving I was literally packing my car for the week. I again explained to her what I was doing, where I was going and told her to contact my counselor for the paperwork. She flat out told me that wasn’t her problem, she didn’t care and when I said said it again she kept saying “Oh We’ll” 😡 . She then informed me that I was going to lose my take homes. I immediately card my counselor who said he would take care of it. My dumb ass believed him and thought I was good. I went in after my travel assignment was done and sure enough I had no take homes. I then contacted the director at the time and my counselor and demanded an emergency meeting I refused to leave the clinic that day until I spoke with each of them. The director was made aware of my situation prior to speaking with me and agreed with my counselor. He asked me who the nurse was and I told him which he replied he knew it was her because he’s had multiple complaints about her before. I got my take homes back, the nurse was suspended, then when she returned she was not allowed to dose me at her window. I don’t know what happened to her after that because I didn’t see her anymore and she’s no longer employed there. I don’t ask for much from this clinic. I haven’t tested positive since I started, I always make my counseling appointments and I show up when I’m supposed to. What I will say is always fight for what’s right. If you know you did nothing wrong don’t just allow them to punish you because you think there’s no other options. Believe me there are plenty of options. I’ve had to contact a methadone advocate outside of my clinic in the past for another mess up the clinic was responsible for. Each state has advocates for Methadone patients and they will fight for you. Don’t ever take no for an answer. My counselor recently became the lead counselor a couple months ago. He trains the new counselors coming in and he always asks me to come in and talk to them he uses my stories and what I’ve gone through as a patient there for the last 11 and half years as a teaching point for them. I enjoy helping them learn hopefully they will use my stories and experiences to help their patients.
