I have been working for over six months now as a janitor. I have been doing the same repetitive job over and over again with very little improvement to my chronic pain or leg function in my bad leg. I can stand for four hours now without my ankle swelling like it used to do, both with and without medical grade compression socks on, but my pain levels and functionality are basically the same. Also, after doing an extra hour or two of work beyong the 4 hour mark leaves my entire body in a flu-like state with heavy sore and barely moveable legs. My co-worker missed another day of work and I had to work for almost a full 8 hours which put me into a flare. My boss continues to request for me to work more than four hours despite the fact that I have told him that I can't. 

I had to call off work today. So, now I will be giving my two week notice so that I don't have to deal with every new co-worker they send me being a flake and constantly missing work. They are supposed to have a shadow crew on standby to handle the workload when regular employees miss. But so many regular employees miss that they don't even have enough of a shadow crew to cover all of the missed workers. I am in pain and come in every day on time and never miss unless they make me work more than I'm capable of working and need a day to recouperate. All I want is to do my four hours and go home not deal with constant chaos. Any how, I have had to up my dose of meds before work recently. It used to take me 1 Norco ten to get through the four hour shift. Then it started to take me 1 Norco before the shift and one during the last hour of the shift. Now I have to take two Norco tens before my shift to make it through. I do not take two at a time on the weekend or even tonight I only took one. I actually take less on the weekend and when I am sitting with my leg elevated.

My body is still shot from working those extra three hours yesterday. I wanted to try and go back to school but I can't do that with a job that keeps on changing all of the time. They hired me as a part time worker which is the only reason why I took this job. I really don't want to go back to sitting on the couch, but I also need a job I can do. Walking and standing jobs are out for me. So I need some sort of education to move forward. Driving and sitting in a chair without my legs elevated causes even more pain than just standing, so those are out because I am not safe to drive on pain meds and it is illegal in CA to do so. I need an office job where I can sit with both legs elevated but also need a degree to obtain such a job. It's going to be difficult at 40 to try this. I would also need some sort of scooter to make it across a campus and a special chair to sit in during classes. I can't sit for 4 hours in a regular type chair. I was hoping that working every night would make me stronger but I still can't even clinb the stairs properly. Last night I had to use both hands and cling to the side of the staircase here at home just to make it up to my bed. If I didn't have a stair rail to cling onto, I would have been stuch down here. If physical therapy is supposed to make you better, it isn't working for me. I repeat the same maneuvers over and over all night and there is no change in the strength of my leg. Also doubling up on pain meds is not to solution to keeping a job that I can't handle. What do you all think about my situation?