I hired a new lawyer to try to receive benefits, once again, in July of 2020. The only reason that I could even think of for not receiving my benefits came to me when I read my own massive amounts of medical records. They were still filled of me drinking and abusing my prescription drugs. Basically, my medical records were filled by untruths that had been given to my doctor by that family member. He and my relative blamed everything on my drinking, even though the doctor had horribly screwed up my medication and covered his own ass by making it sound like it was my own fault.
I was in disbelief…I had quit drinking well before I had been seeing this doctor…and it had been almost 3 years since I had drunk any alcohol as well. I was being maligned by this doctor and my own family member and nobody would believe me. Everyone just kept looking at my medical records, which were utter lies about what was done to improve my health and coming to a decision about me relied on these lies.
I did what I could to stay in this city where I was finally seeing progress in my health. I had two life insurance policies, one from my grandparents and one from my parents from the day that I was born. These were now 50 years old, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to sell these off in order to survive to pay for a roof over my head and supply cheap food for my table. It took me three months of fighting with the insurance companies to make this happen next. They kept saying that they could not find the policies or make any payments on them.
My roommate, who owned the house, witnessed how hard I was trying to get money to pay him rent and was nice enough not to throw me out on my ear. I finally had to take my case to the government offices who control these issues. I had all the names, the policy numbers, and I was holding the paperwork in my hand to give them all any information. It took another month, but miraculously they found the policies again. I thought that it would be a much larger amount, but I had to take whatever they offered me and pay my back rent of three months and 2 months in the future.
In the meantime, my neuro-physical therapist had her brain doctor husband look for anything that was still making me dizzy and unsteady all the time. He found that the last concussion that I had received at my father’s home, had done more damage than the other doctors had ever tried to find. He found that the signal coming from the cerebrum in my brain to my right inner ear was fine, but the signal to my left inner ear was slowed. This is what was causing me to be extremely unsteady and gave me intense Vertigo.
He also discovered that the pituitary gland in my brain had been beaten and injured beyond any repair. This is what was causing me to suddenly have high blood sugar and diabetes now, which there was none in my family and I had no troubles with before this happened. These doctors were finally listening to me, and progress was being made in my health.
Then I got a letter from Social Security, and they had lost my paperwork, once again. This was the third time that this had happened. I once again got all my medical records, wrong as they were, and got a ride to the government offices. I sat there for four hours and finally gave them all my paperwork and filled out additional items that they gave me in person. I then had them have a supervisor witness me giving them every bit of paperwork that they required, for the third time, had them make me additional copies, and sign off on everything.
I received letters back after this saying that they hadn’t receive copies and I would go get copies of the signed documents and certify mail them to the offices. I could see when it was signed for and they could never make that excuse to me ever again. It was very satisfying to hit the ball onto their side of the court. The government offices seemed to be going out of their way to make this as hard as possible for me. But I could not work, and I was being driven by what was right and moral. I was not going to give up and let mishandling of my records by them to slow the process even more.
The pandemic was running rampant, and I was running out of money, once again. I had no choice and I had to call my father in the smaller city again and beg to come home. He still did not want me to come back, but I had no choice and almost had to beg to come home. This had now been 16 months after putting in my paperwork for my third attempt at disability, and I had still received nothing but heartache and massive amounts of paperwork from the government.
Plus, my father was 89 years old, and he had been in that house all alone. That made me feel so terrible, he should not be there by himself during this pandemic of sickness and fear. It would help us both out for me to move home and take care of him. So, in October of 2021, I had to leave the doctors who were helping me and move back into this smaller city and in with my father who had thrown me into a nursing home.
The one thing that was good about moving to this smaller city and in with my father was that the surgeon who performed my surgically replaced shoulder was there. I had already had two years of physical therapy on it, but after an appointment with him, I was granted 6 more months of physical therapy for it. At that point, the 8 months that it was supposed to take to get disability was going to be up and my attorney said that I should be almost likely to get it this time.
After 6 more months of extensive physical therapy, my arm became as good as it ever would. I am lacking a huge amount of strength in it, and I still cannot raise it over my head. I call it now ‘my T-Rex’ arm. Having the unsteadiness from brain injuries and an always weakened arm, stairs have now become my Kryptonite.
Going up the stairs with the railing on my right side is not bad and I can slowly do this. However, going down the stairs is a different story. I must go down backwards and if I try to do it normally, I feel like I am going to lose total control. My legs feel like they are going to go out from under me and I will fall down the stairs once again. The best way for me to go down the stairs now is that I have got to sit on each step and go down one step at a time on my rump. This is highly slow to do and extremely embarrassing to attempt. Of course, I also have panic attacks whenever I attempt this to where I can barely move at some points.
Once again, after another six months, my third chance of getting disability was way overdue and I still had not heard anything. My lawyer was constantly after them, but still nothing was happening. After my second year of waiting, I was told that my medical records from the first two attempts at getting some help could no longer be used. So, I had to go to two special doctors that the government picked out for me to see. Once again, I jumped through all the governmental hoops to make getting disability an actuality but was still not hearing any information about getting any help.