A little over 22 years ago I injured my shoulder while in boot camp in the Air Force moving a desk on President's Day. It took almost a year for it to recover and in the meantime the Air Force decided that it wasn't their fault and I was too damaged to be of further service. For the next 10 years it was an annoyance that every other year or so would cause me to suddenly need a week or two sick time as the shoulder would seize up. Invariably that would be the beginning of whatever business I was working for to start sliding me toward the exit door due to being unreliable.
A little under a decade ago, after losing my job due to the dotcom meltdown, a divorce from my first wife, and a series of moves culminating with moving back in with my Mother, my shoulder seized up again and didn't unseize for almost 5 years. From that point on the number of days of the year that I am not in agony for a significant portion of the day can be counted on my fingers and toes. However, this isn't a diary about the physical pain I endure on a day to day basis. This is a diary about how I have to, at age 42+, move back in with my Mother due to finances.
Early in 2003, after it started to become obvious that my shoulder was not going to recover like it always did in the past, I filed for SSDI. I had already been out of work for 2 years and for the last year plus a few months my shoulder had me sidelined. I kept telling myself, my family and my friends that I'd be fine and that the shoulder would allow me to work once it had some rest. My girlfriend, wife to be in another year or so, finally forced me to face that I had been saying that for over a year.
At first the Medical Community was hostile towards me. As far as MRI's, X-Rays and other diagnostic tools tell them, there is little physical damage in the shoulder. Definitely not enough to account for the pain I claimed to be experiencing. It was one of those visits that led to my marriage and moving out from my Mom's and living back on my own again.
He was openly hostile to the fact that I was complaining about the pain. After numerous times ordering me to sit up straight and ignore the pain that was in the shoulder, he chastised me saying that I was ignoring the pain I was causing my family by faking the shoulder pain. His report was going to come back to haunt me many times over. Even though I have since gotten many Doctors to certify that the pain was real, even the head of that Doctor's clinic. The current theory is that my Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism is causing a vicious feedback loop magnifying the pain and causing the muscles to react to the magnified pain both sustaining it and intensifying it.
My wife, who I met and started dating before the shoulder re-seized, has Late Onset Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. When she was in her mid-20's she had both knees replaced and is on SSDI. She recognized early on that she was not going to be able to compete physically with her peers early on and worked at completing her Bachelor's degree to be better able compete mentally and be able to re-enter the workforce.
It was a tough slog for her, partially due to financial instability causing delays. But also because in the middle of her pursuit, her father, a D-Day Paratrooper survivor, chose an inconvenient time to begin his slide towards death. School was put on hold while she battled with the VA to honor its commitments, battled with her own medical needs and battled in getting me medical attention from the Doctors. It took her a little more time than she liked, but she overcame those obstacles and obtained her degree only to find that it was not enough. Just as she was re-establishing herself, and just in time for SSDI back to work benefits to expire, the Wall Street Financial meltdown occurred.
In the interim, my SSDI claim has been continuously denied. With the before mentioned Doctor's clinic notes being used as justification each time. It has been so long since I have been able to work that I am no longer eligible for SSDI. I am now on my last appeal, taking the Social Security Administration to Federal Court and having to represent myself there because no Lawyer certified to do so will take the case.
Because this appeal is not based upon Medical Documentation but whether the SSDI Administrative Judge followed all procedures correctly. My entire case hinges upon the fact that I managed to get the Jobs Specialist to admit that not being able to be consistently at work and predicatively be able to project when that would occur. That, and the fact that the Judge made multiple references to my enjoying the "Disabled Lifestyle," whatever that is. None of which is on the written decision but is on the audio transcripts of the hearing.
So now my wife and I are living on her SSDI based upon the small amount of work history she managed to build up, minus the years she ran her own cab company in Alaska and therefore didn't contribute to SSDI. We are fortunate enough to have Public Assisted Housing but still have to pay utilities which alone are in excess of $400 a month. In order to pay for her very expensive Arthritis medications as well as the 20% co-pay for Medicare/Medicaid, we have to have membership into the State's High Risk Insurance Pool. Again, we are fortunate to have even that as entrance is now severely capped due to the state's ongoing and perpetual financial crisis.
In essence, our monthly expenses, living on our own and attempting to be productive members of society, are currently almost a thousand more than we bring in. Ironically, due to all the public assistance we receive, even if we were to magically get an extra thousand a month the assistance would adjust to absorb somewhere near half of it and we would still be in the hole. Hence, the title, I can't do this anymore.
So far we have been surviving off of "loans" from my Mother who is now nearing her retirement and has been siphoning out funding it just to keep us near a float. Luckily for us, she has been, so far, working in jobs that could afford to both invest in her retirement and assist us. However, few businesses are interested in keeping an expensive Project Manager that is already in her 60's. Continuing to siphon off nearly a thousand a month while we hope against hope that the SSDI case will turn out is simply no longer sustainable.
The thing that gets me in all of this is that I will be fine. I come from a Lower Upper Class family income bracket. It has had the resources to keep me afloat for the last decade and the worst case scenario is that I move back in with them. Every day I know just how good I have it and I have hide from myself just how many don't have it this good. How many don't have access to the resources I do. If I didn't, then I really couldn't do it anymore.