My insurance had run out for any therapy, and I could not rely on getting any more help at this facility at this time. I had applied for disability for the first time and was denied for that and had now begun the process of my second attempt at getting disability. How could I work and make a living from the confines of a nursing home that I could not leave?
I was told that I could stay in this nursing home, but it would just be for room and board. I had sustained massive brain and body injuries and I needed to be seen by a neurologist and psychiatrist. The kicker of this situation was that there were none in the city that I was currently in. I could not work, and I had no way of obtaining an income. Plus, I had been told that I could not go home to my family’s home. I did not know what I could do.
Just to ask a question about getting a phone number, I contacted my friend and ex roommate from college once again. I knew that I had to move to the city that he lived at in order to see the specialist’s that I needed for my brain. This was the same friend that I had taken advantage of when I had lived there once before when I was drinking heavily. I had to swallow my pride and contact him once again and apologize for the horrible creep that I had been before.
To my amazement, he welcomed me back to his home and would allow me to stay in a small bedroom that he had for an honest rent. I had no way of receiving any income because my second attempt at getting disability was still being processed, but I was hopeful that I would not be let down again on getting any help from the Federal Government. The doctors and therapists had told me that I would never drive again, so I had sold my vehicle and had that small amount of money saved. However, I had no way of getting to this larger city.
It turns out that his marriage was not going well, and his wife and son had moved out of state. He needed the extra money at the time, so I paid him to drive the over 200 miles to me and pick me up and return me to his residence. I cannot thank him enough for giving me a place to stay where I could get the help that I sorely needed. The dizziness and unsteadiness of my mind and body was still causing me to have the uncontrollable abilities to balance or walk. I still felt like I could fall at any instant and I would forget things or mix up things at an alarming rate.
For the next year, I lived here and tried to focus on getting well again. I was unable to drive in this year and had sold my vehicle, so I had to rely on taxis to take me to and from my doctor appointments. I would often have two to four different doctor’s appointments per week. A new family doctor had found that I was diabetic, and my blood sugars were extremely high. So that became a new addition to my medical maladies and once again, almost all the medication for this problem was making me even more sick.
I was going to this family doctor regularly, a new therapist regularly, a new psychiatrist regularly, a new neurologist regularly, a new physical therapist, a new voice therapist and finally a new Neuro-physical therapist. Once again, I had to rely on taxi’s and I would schedule a pick-up at the house early in the morning, and then would have to call them after the appointment and wait for them to arrive. Sometimes it was an hour, but most of the time it was 2-4 hours of waiting for a ride back to the house.
That was a heck of a lot of down time that I had to silently sit at local hospital waiting rooms with no one to speak with. It was the year of the pandemic lockdowns, and nobody would get close to me. So I would sit, masked, and being bombarded by scenes coming off a silent TV of protests and burning buildings and riots. I was going to go even more into madness if I didn’t start doing something. So, I started carrying a yellow legal pad with me throughout the day and I began to write once again.
Another story and characters started to form in my mind once again. I would write in the legal pad during the day, and then transfer my writings onto a used computer in the evenings. It took a year of many hours spent in hospital waiting rooms, but I had now created my second novel. I had once again fallen in love with the characters and the story that came out of me.
I was still hopefully waiting and relying on getting disability to be able to stay in the city where I could be helped by my new doctors. They had made amazing discoveries about specific maladies that were affecting me that my old doctors in the other city had never found. However, I had received a letter for the second time that I had been rejected by social security to receive any disability payments.
My heart sunk, once again. Why could I not get any help? Especially when I had been witnessing people taking advantage of the system and people that did as little as possible were chosen to receive help more than me. I was filling out all the right paperwork and sitting in front of government workers tirelessly trying to get help. I was doing everything right… I had been paying my taxes for 30 years… I was trying incredibly badly to get better and off any government systems… but I needed help in doing so. Why was I being shunned?