I am officially disabled. Yay?

So, 4 years after I got sick, 3½ years after applying for Social Security and 2 months after the hearing I finally received notice from the judge about his decision. He has decided that, based on all the information and the SSA regulations, I am disabled and have been since July of 2005.

Oddly, the decision is dated the last day of the month, which is 4 years to the day since I came home from the hospital.

With everyone questioning me over and over it was hard to not start to doubt myself – and I was really just adrift with all this waiting. I was trying to just let it all go and not worry about anything since there was nothing that I could do but wait. Still, I couldn’t help being anxious about it so I was really on edge.

I had this thought that it’s time to move on but I just can’t leave this behind – feel free to use that as a song title.

Enough of this – it’s finally over with.

Well, just one more thing. Now I know why my lawyer told me that this judge does not give quick decisions and that it would be a while before I heard anything (though 2 months still seems like a long time). Anyway, you can tell that this guy was thorough, and made a very considered decision after looking at all of the information. This thing is long.

OK, that’s enough of that. I was trying to do other things, time to get back to them. The only thing that this changes is that I don’t have to wonder when I’ll hear something. I still need to get on with other things. Which I will post about later.

Dazed and confused

In a way I feel like I’m sleepwalking. I move through the day and sometimes the world but I’m not fully aware of what I am doing or what is going on around me. I don’t know if this is a long-standing problem or a result of my trying to gather my thoughts. Maybe it’s my medication. But by focusing on my thoughts I lose track of the rest of life.

I also post things like yesterday’s mass of words that are amazingly lacking in clarity. Not to mention a really formal title. Why use ‘it is’ instead of ‘it’s’, I ask you? I ask myself as well.

I am wondering if this feeling is because of my attempt to get my thoughts clear and maybe that is making me more empty-headed; in other words, rather than organizing my thoughts, I am not thinking. I also worry that by trying to not let the events of four years ago influence my present too much I am still frozen by a subconscious entanglement with the months of August and September. I’m trying to remember it as my own history but not as an overt and limiting influence on my life. That may not be working so well – I’m being too passive about it and may need to work out an active plan. That past keeps breaking through into my present in unwelcome ways.

Now that I think about it, I am also trying to force myself to relax at the same time. While neither thing may sound like much, they are both reorientations of patterns of behavior and thought. Sort of like trying to stop smoking and going on a diet at the same time. Not a formula for success.

I am also concerned that I am starting so many sentences with the word ‘I’. I think this may signal a pattern. I do not know what this pattern indicates. I wonder what it could mean.

See, I told you that writing helped me think things out. Except for that whole ‘I’ thing.

It is September

I imagine that you noticed. In fact September is more than half over and I have been absent from this space for more than an entire month. It was not intentional – well, it was, sort of. I wanted to let myself get my thoughts together. Since I had not yet gotten those pesky thoughts together, I refrained from posting. There was nothing coming to me to post. I have still not gotten my thoughts together, but that’s OK – as far as this is concerned. I’ll post anyway.

What I need to do is let myself recover without constantly pushing myself, physically and mentally. I do not do this. I do not relax well because I perceive this need to keep pushing to get things done and to get better. While there are things that need to be done and I need to get better, it is also true that I need to relax. This has been pointed out to me, more than once, by more than one person, but I cannot relax. I see it as a luxury so I go until I am forced by exhaustion to stop.

But relaxing is a necessity. If I don’t relax I won’t recover and I won’t be able to get done what needs to be done. I will also go crazy.

So I have been trying to not do things that are not immediately necessary. I have succeeded somewhat, though the other day I did a few things around the house, a few relatively minor things, and I crashed hard. Sunday was a particularly bad day. I thought I was being good, but I need to look closer at how I assess such things. On the other hand, I do that sort of thing less often these days.

I obviously haven’t worked everything out yet, but I feel less like I’m coasting if I at least post something. So I’ll just post whatever comes to mind. Writing also helps me work things out so I hope to get back to this more regularly. Maybe I’ll even post things that are more coherent than this – we can all dream.

Silver lining

I suppose having such a messed up weekend at least kept me from going on about the anniversary of the day I went into the hospital and into the ICU and was put on a ventilator. Four years ago Saturday, August 1st.

Except for this short mention that is.

Responsible for my own actions

OK, for personal reasons Saturday sucked. Because of that Sunday sucked. The rain was nice – since we suffered no devastation. It was nice to sit in the storm shadowed house and enjoy the rain. When there are no consequences I enjoy a good storm. Yes, I am being selfish – I do realize that other people did have problems. I take my little pleasures where I can.

So, this was a weekend of failure. Mostly because I am absolutely, monumentally and totally disappointed in a lapse in my behavior. In a familial, but not at home, setting. I was exhausted, I exercised a poor choice of words and I did not control myself well and my actions were not what they should have been – which is an amazing understatement. No excuses, just explanation. These are the some of the things that I am responsible for. This is also something that I am working on. Yes, it is a result of my illness.

As in all cases like this I hope that I can use it as a lesson to better understand myself and improve wherever possible.

Now, how do I apply that to this week? Time to start thinking. Today has already been used running some errands. I know I need to recharge after last week but I need to be as productive as possible.

We’ll see how this works out.

Over, but not quite done with

The hearing in front of the administrative law judge was this morning. It went well as far as I can tell. I liked the judge – and I hope that opinion doesn’t change. My lawyer knows him, says he’s fair, and he also thought things went well today. Unfortunately, my lawyer also says that he does not make on the spot decisions and that along with the backlog means there’s no telling when I’ll find out what the outcome is.

One other thing. The way these things work, you don’t really see your lawyer face to face that much. There are long waiting periods – waiting for the state to do something – so you go for long stretches without even talking much. So, as much as I like the guy, I don’t know that much about him. Before the hearing we were running through things, and he checked out the CD the SSA creates to keep all of my records on. It could not be read.

Now this was no big deal. The people at the SSA office just went and created another one. We had it well before the hearing started, and my lawyer had time to check it out. So he stuck the CD in the computer and expressed his hope that it could be read and that he could see the files. He said that he was looking for wormsign.

I did a double-take. I looked over at my wife and quietly asked her if she had heard the same thing I had. Then I asked my lawyer if I had heard him correctly. I had. And he meant exactly what I thought he meant.

Turns out that he had been re-reading Dune.

That was completely unexpected.

I hope it’s a good thing.

And at warp 10 we're going nowhere pretty fast

There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and a lot going on in my world, and you know, I’m walking right at the edge. Plus it’s one of those days when my neck is so bad my head spins whenever I try to stand up.

No matter how much I try not to think about the hearing on Wednesday, let alone not worry about it, I just can’t keep it from my mind. This has been going on for 3½ years and now that it’s all coming down to this, everything focused on one day, I’m really feeling it.

One benefit is that this has been keeping me from going on about the anniversary date stuff. Well, with the exception of yesterday’s little quip. I have a lot to say, but since I haven’t been able to work it all out in my head I haven’t written it yet. I hope that this gives me a chance to actually get a handle on all of the conflicting issues that I am trying to deal with.

One thing I can tell you – and I am saying this to myself as well as to anyone else – is that this will be the end. For four years I have lived through endless recapitulation of what had happened to me and what was wrong with me. It’s been four years of endless rounds with doctors and lawyers and paperwork and people not believing what I have been saying – as if I would want to even fake living like this. Four years of basing my life off of those two months in 2005 when I was unconscious in the ICU. Four years of constant effort just to tread water and keep telling people the same thing over and over. One problem with only telling the truth is that you just keep repeating yourself. For four years I have been looking back at where I was. No more of that. No more of the past keeping me back.

After Wednesday that’s all over. It’s time to look forward and move ahead. It’s time to look at the past as a starting point and not the finish. It’s damn sure past time to start living for myself, put the past in perspective and look to the future. It’s time to live today as today and not as an echo of some day in 2005.

It’s time to work on having a life.

Now to get back to worrying and setting my nerves on edge and messing with my gastrointestinal system. I need to work on that ulcer some more, and sleep tonight should be really interesting.

I’ll probably post about the hearing tomorrow unless I crash for too long.