Working in person again

Blahjaj26

Our office has been entirely remote since early 2020. Our work is in the IT field so the environment was very suited for remote work. We are at the point where remote work is ending and are being asked to come into the office for in-person work. The initial announcements and emails from our site management have been without mention or discussion about accommodations for people who have increased risk to serious illness to COVID-19. The guidance instead has been to bring up specific concerns to your management. For the immunocompromised here I am curious what kind of accommodations or exceptions your employer has made in your working environment and for individuals working remotely because of the pandemic how has the return to the office been handled by your employer.

Kriste

I recently went back to work after receiving my transplant in December. Other than being allowed to wear my mask all day there haven't been any other accommodations.

Blahjaj26

Had my transplant in September. Wearing a mask all day is the part I am least thrilled about. My transplant team is still recommending masking indoors and because we have an open office environment I am thinking I would want to wear a high-filtration mask which is uncomfortable.

VeggiePowered

I am lucky as my employer approved my request to move my position to be reclassified as a remote worker so I am not tied to an office. For those not so fortunate start talking about forming a union! I bet your employers will happily allow you to work from home 🙂 to keep you/that idea away from coworkers.

Blahjaj26

@VeggiePowered, Congrats on becoming a remote worker! How did you initiate the process? Did you just have the discussion with your manager to get the ball rolling or did your company have a process in place you could follow with HR? In an effort to get people back into the office my company has started to discourage teleworking going to the level of reclassifying previous teleworkers as hybrid workers if they live within a certain distance from an office.

Bnazworth22

I’m a little over a year and I went back to work 6 months after liver transplant and did fine with my job .My job is a little different coming back to the work force I had to walk back into the mix of bing a firefighter some people believe we just deal with fires 80%of our jobs today is medical calls I seem to being doing fine . Hope y’all do fine too.

Pablo

My concern about returning to work in person - I am 3+ months post-kidney transplant. As a State Legislator (NH) I have to be in contact with many other legislators who are neither masked nor vaccinated. I don't want a political discussion here - just I am concerned that I am so immunocompromised and still at high risk of kidney rejection - it just doesn't make sense to me to return to that environment. Even if I am masked.I have had 2 bouts of sepsis in the past 2 months, so I must be real protective of my health.

Shelbycreates

Could you talk to them about postponing in person until you have some version of the Evusheld injection? You could send them some documentation on how effective it is for transplant patients.

https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2022/evusheld-long-acting-antibody-combination-recommended-for-approval-in-the-eu-for-the-pre-exposure-prophylaxis-prevention-of-covid-19.html