What I could do is write, but not quickly at all. However. I have to read back every paragraph and make any changes to mistakes that I have made. I forget words…I misspell certain easy words…and misarrange letters of words. These are often very easy words that I have a real problem with, and it takes me an extremely long time to write, but I keep at it, very slowly.
I cannot sit for a long time, otherwise I can hardly walk when I stand up. Plus, I cannot stand for very long as I will get extremely tired and have got to sit down again. I must walk this fine line between wariness and unsteadiness, otherwise I become very close to falling down and everyone that I have seen says that I need to be very careful about hitting my head again, otherwise it could be lights out for me.
I walk with a limp and cannot run or jump at all. I cannot bend over and then try to lift my head otherwise I really feel dizzy and almost fall. The motion of the earth going by has made riding a bike impossible to do for me. If I do end up on the floor, I have a terrible time standing once again and always need the help of something or someone. If I move my head too quickly, I always must grab onto something or someone, otherwise I will fall. When I do bend over, I can only do this very slowly or else lose my balance. The doctors have tried to have me walk heal to toe and I do not have the balance to do this. I also cannot speak correctly. I forget words and will only have 80 % of my voice capability once again. This is just a small amount of what my life has become.
However, I am a fighter who continually tries to become stronger. I go to the gym regularly and write whenever I can. These are the best therapies that I have been able to come up with for myself. It is not from a lack of trying, as I have been working on my mind and body strength incredibly with intense vigor and will continue to do so.
I was told that I would never do many things again. I have got to hire a driver to go many places, which I get very little compensation for. They told me that I would never walk without a walker again, I use a cane most of the time if I am walking over a quarter of a mile. If I am standing for over twenty minutes, I will get very weak. I helped my father by cooking and cleaning, but I could not stand above the stove for long and I could not run a vacuum without making my back feel like it was going to give out and I would become extremely weak and unsteady with any bending at the waist.
It took over two years on trying to get disability the third time, until I was accepted for the smallest state amount and was once again denied by the federal government. I have not been able to work since 2018, when I first applied for disability. That has been almost five years now. I have been living in my father’s home for over two years now. I am trying extensively to make myself better, but I think that I have almost reached the pinnacle of what I can do.
It is hard for me to say and start to realize…but I am a disabled person. I am also still possessed by horrible panic disorder and PTSD, as I have been for 32 years now. Only now, I have become a non-drinker for 5 years now and my medication is carefully supervised. If I have more panic attacks than what I have pills for, I still cannot get any extra pills to tide me over and have got to fight through these attacks, to the best ability that I can. This is hell at times, because nobody can predict when panic disorder will take hold of you, and I can almost not walk at all when this happens.
My lawyer has also applied for an appeal of my federal disability benefits. She informed me that most people, even if they go into a hearing like I will be doing, they have 500 pages of medical records to back them up. As of a year ago, I had 2500 pages of medical records. I am sure that I am close to 3000 pages now.
They wanted me to have my hearing virtually done, but I refused this. That is what I kept running into is having an adjudicator or judge who was getting the wrong information about me or misjudged how badly I am disabled. It would be so much easier to turn me down through a video screen and I want to look a judge in the eye and show him how bad I have become.
I haven’t been able to work for nearly 5 years now and I am not going to give up. I have no other choice. I had to sell my two life insurance policies and I have had collections of items that I have collected since I was a young boy. I have had to sell most of my belongings on Ebay or Craigslist just to be able to survive. My father was giving me a room to sleep in, but that was it. I have not received any payments for helping him and being his primary caregiver.
I cannot understand it, but it all goes back to the lies that were being told about me from that other relative and that doctor. My father believed them and would not pay me for the help that I was giving him. My father is an elderly farmer, and he often treats me like he did when I was growing up. This was like a hired man that room was part of your payment. To my father, he was listening to untruths about his own son and did not know who to believe. The truth about my past was not on my side, so I ended up being the one not trusted.
I not only had to sell all these previous items that I mentioned before, but I had to pretty much sell everything that I owned. I was down to trying to sell my additional clothes on the internet. This has caused a huge amount of contention within my family and I keep getting accused of things that I cannot control or things that I did not have any part of.
I could not keep trying to do much of the work in helping my father. My back, arm, balance control or my mentality would not allow it. I did get help in getting a nurse to come in and help my father with his pills because I would get confused between his pills and my own. I got some help from the VA sending over people to help with cleaning and laundry for my father. Plus, I worked out to get help for him, and for myself, by getting some additional help that I could not do. It wouldn’t matter how much money he offered me at this point, I cannot physically or mentally do many things.