{"id":15219,"date":"2010-06-13T00:38:22","date_gmt":"2010-06-13T04:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/?p=15219"},"modified":"2010-06-13T00:38:22","modified_gmt":"2010-06-13T04:38:22","slug":"disability-and-personal-finance-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/disability-and-personal-finance-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Disability And Personal Finance – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently came across a blog called I pick up pennies<\/a> and when I read the about me<\/a> page, I wrote the author of the blog (Abigail) an email asking if we could swap guest post. I wanted her to write about her disability, a bit about her personal finance and how was the process of her application to get disability benefits. One of the reasons why I was interested in that is because too many (if not all) personal finance blogs are written by abled body people who simply talk about things like retirement, passive income, investment etc. But to someone who is on disability checks, I’m pretty sure their world could not be further from what’s written in the mainstream press and blogs. To my astonishment, Abigail wrote such a personal and touching piece that I was floored when I read it. Regular readers here would know that I do my best to provide updates on the best credit card and reward deals. I’ve occasionally written about other money topics but today (since it is the weekend), I am going to stray further and present you with this wonderful guest post from Abigail. In fact, the post is so long that I am breaking it into two parts. I hope that this will give us an insight to another group of folks who have a totally different set of problems than many of us. It sure makes me feel having credit card debt (while burdensome and stressful) is not the end of the world. <\/i><\/p>\n

<\/a> I was 25 years old when I applied for Social Security disability benefits.<\/p>\n

My background<\/b> – I had spent the last six years in various forms of denial about my condition. A rare, neurological disease, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, had landed me in the hospital for about three and a half months, most of which was spent on life support. Along with temporarily paralyzing most of my body, the illness had made my lungs too weak to draw enough oxygen on their own.<\/p>\n

I rushed back into classes fall quarter \u2013 only five months after leaving the hospital, and about three months after I had learned to walk unassisted. I had severe bouts of fatigue, but denial enhanced my usual stubborn nature. I was sure I could get back to a \u201cnormal\u201d life.<\/p>\n

Life After College<\/b> – After I was done with college, I tried various forms of jobs, but nothing was sustainable. Part-time didn\u2019t bring in enough money. Full-time work left me so exhausted that I wept in the shower each morning out of pure fatigue. Two part-time jobs left me too scattered \u2013 and still too exhausted \u2013 to keep up, though I was able to set my own hours to an extent. I also tried temp work, but anything for more than a day or two, and I was useless.<\/p>\n

I did try some resident manager work and later added occasional temp work to the mix. Even so, there were things that, between the depression and fatigue, I just couldn\u2019t handle.<\/p>\n

Lost in life<\/b> – So, at age 25, I found myself living with my mom. She paid the rent, and I tried to rest up. Also, I spent time trying not to think too hard about my situation: I was jobless, too exhausted to do much of anything, and dependent on a parent for basic necessities.<\/p>\n

I felt like I had taken a wrong turn somewhere, but the only one I found was completely out of my control. I hadn\u2019t gotten sick from carelessness. It was just a random (10 people out of a million get Guillain-Barre) and senseless fact: I contracted a rare neurological disease, and it utterly changed the landscape of my life.<\/p>\n

So when my mom told me to apply for disability, I knew it was really the only viable option. Still, I was crushed. But what choice did I have? Even three-day temp work was impossible. And no matter how much sleep I got, I woke up exhausted, my thinking lost in a fog of fatigue. No matter what I ate or how much I moderated my activity, I wasn\u2019t seeing any progress<\/p>\n

Still, I put it off for nearly two months. I knew that once I filled out that application, I would be admitting to something irreversible: being disabled. That simply wasn\u2019t me. Disability was an abstract, terrifying notion \u2013 and it was something that happened to other people.<\/p>\n

I had been working since I was 14. Actually, 12 if you count babysitting. The summer before college, I worked two full-time jobs to help pad my savings account. The summer after that, I worked one full-time and one part-time job.<\/p>\n

In my family, a work ethic was important. It wasn\u2019t so much what you do, but that you do it in a hard-working, dedicated fashion. So to admit I might never be able to work again\u2026 That was akin to admitting I had been stripped of one of the basic tenets of my personality.<\/p>\n

Lost in despair<\/b> – About a year after I got sick, I started to fall apart. Denial gets a bad rap, but it\u2019s actually an important survival tool.Have traumatic stuff that your brain can\u2019t handle? No problem, we\u2019ll just cut it down into bite-sized chunks. You can take it in a bit at a time.<\/p>\n

Really, it\u2019s only when denial lingers \u2013 when you never get around to facing the reality of your situation \u2013 that it becomes a problem. And that\u2019s where I was. When I told people the story of the previous year, I ended with, \u201cBut I\u2019m okay now. I get tired, but I\u2019m fine.\u201d
\nIt took my therapist a good 10 minutes of back and forth to get me to admit to life support:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were on life support.\u201d
\n\u201cUh, no I wasn\u2019t.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, let\u2019s see: You were on a ventilator because you couldn\u2019t breathe.\u201d
\n\u201cRight.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd you couldn\u2019t chew or swallow, so they had you hooked up to a feeding tube.\u201d
\n\u201cYeah.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd they had a heart monitor.\u201d
\n\u201cUh-huh.\u201d
\n\u201cSo you were on life support.\u201d
\n\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another time around or so, and I got very quiet. And then I started to weep. To admit to life support was to admit to true, devastating, life-threatening trauma. But I needed everything to be alright. I needed everything to get back to normal.<\/p>\n

My therapist diagnosed me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as well as depression \u2013 both from the illness and pre-existing depression that had probably always been there. I spent the next couple of years working with her and trying to get better, with varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n

But, at age 25, I lost whatever composure I had maintained over those years. I was restless all the time. I was miserable, and felt tormented by my condition and my prospects for the future. While I had never considered the universe to be a fair place, I was devastated by the injustice being visited upon me.<\/p>\n

What really got me, though, were the constant negative thoughts. The questions that wouldn\u2019t go away. Could I ever take care of a child? Who would want a partner who couldn\u2019t pull her own weight? Would I be a drain on my family forever?<\/p>\n

As time wore on, the questions got louder, until they drowned out even the distractions I employed: TV, reading, Iming with friends. That is about the time I started having suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, I\u2019m sureprised they didn\u2019t happen sooner. But at the time, it felt like one more weakness, one more failure \u2013 to maintain a semblance of sanity \u2013 in a long list of crushing defeats.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for part 2<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\"I<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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