All Clear To Work



Mary Jo, Captain Karen Ruth, F/A Jamie Page

Mary Jo is preparing herself to return to work at Delta Airlines as a flight attendant this spring/summer.  Mary Jo has been "offline" for over a year and a half as she went through her cancer treatment and recovery.   In order to return to work, Mary Jo is required by the FAA and Delta Airlines to go through an intense requalification training program on all of the cabin systems, emergency procedures, and aircraft door operation on all the aircraft types that Delta flies worldwide.  If Mary Jo had been on a leave of absence for less than a year, she would only have been required to go through a brief annual recurrent training program and a brief Delta systems and aircraft training session (AQ and IQ).  Mary Jo however must be retrained on everything including all of Delta's procedures for both domestic and international in flight service.  She is a little overwhelmed right now at the thought of all the classroom training that lies ahead.  When Mary Jo went on a medical leave of absence in July of 2009, the merger integration between the former Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines equipment and aircraft had not happened yet so everything will be new to her.  This morning Mary Jo's oncologist, Dr Mathew Gall faxed me a "return to work without restrictions" authorization letter.  This is the document that Mary Jo's employer required before she could start this process of re-entering the working world.  Mary Jo still tires out pretty easy and experiences joint and muscle pain from the strong cancer fighting drug Arimidex.   She will continue to take Arimidex for another four years and she is looking forward to getting back to work and a "normal" life, one not filled with weekly doctor visits, scans, needles and surgeries.