Health Toll Taken Even of the Employed

Employment doesn’t guarantee immunity from sometimes devastating effects of the recession on a person’s health.

Doctors say they are seeing more working patients with stress-related problems, from neck pain to chest tightness, stomach ulcers and anxiety attacks, because of the extra work they must shoulder after co-workers are laid off or because of fear that the ax may hit them next.

“Every internist’s office is full of them,” said Dr. Jane Curtis of Santa Ana. “We see a lot of stomach problems from stress, and it has definitely increased from the recession.” In addition, she said, more office workers are coming to her with tension headaches and spasms in the neck and upper shoulder muscles which can be traced to feeling pressured while working at a computer terminal.

Dr. Laurence Wellikson, another internist, said one of his patients is a salesman who once called on clients only in Orange County. Although he regularly put in a 10-hour workday, he thrived on his job because “at the end of the day he felt good about what he had accomplished,” Wellikson said.

But now the patient’s company has consolidated, and he also serves Riverside County.

“He is working 14 hours a day now and feeling like he hasn’t gotten his job done at the end of the day,” Wellikson said.

“He has abdominal pain and his hair is falling out. But he doesn’t want to tell his boss, ‘I can’t do it.’ By the same token, he says, ‘I don’t have time to come in to your office and get better. I have to be out on the road doing the job.’ ”

Also, doctors observe that finding a new job doesn’t mean freedom from medical woes--especially bills. The reason is that the health policies that new employers offer usually exclude coverage for “pre-existing conditions.”

Rod Cockrell, 45, of Mission Viejo was laid off as a marketing administrator for a small defense contractor last October. He needs to get back to work and has been trying hard to find a job. For the last two months, he said, relatives have been helping his family pay their rent.

But Cockrell’s wife, June, needs knee surgery, and he worries that if he gets a job--like one for which he was interviewed in Chicago--MediCal would no longer pay for the operation.

“The company’s insurance probably would not cover the knee as a pre-existing problem or there might be a large deductible I couldn’t pay,” Cockrell said. “So I have to ask myself do I want them to give me a job. It is a real emotional roller coaster.”