Disability!

There have been about a million things that I've wanted to blog about in the past few weeks, but by the time everyone is taken care of, fed, changed, medicated, and in bed, my fingers are just too tired.

Big news for today: my Social Security Disability was approved! First time. No re-application, no appeal, no court, no fighting. What a relief!!! I should get the official letter with the detailed information within the next few days, which is good, because I sort of spaced out during the phone call after I heard “Approved.”

I have not felt too confident about the SSDI application these past few months. Almost everyone I've talked to told me horror stories about years of appeals, court, invasion of privacy, impartial medical examinations. I was only being treated consistently by one specialist, and while he's an awesome doctor, he wasn't immediately willing to send back the letter of support requested by my attorney. All through the process, I got the feeling that my attorney wished I had a mental health condition rather than a physical disability. Even when I communicated with a disability specialist, I felt as though I'd done everything wrong. Every time I carried my child into my house out of pure necessity, no matter how much pain it caused, I worried about a disability spy watching from the bushes, ready to deny my claim.

Thank goodness all of that is over.

Now life goes on. On one hand, it hurts that the government has deemed me unable to work any job by nature of my disability. I know that this isn't a death sentence—this is what I wanted: the ability to take care of myself. So that's the other side of this, the positive. I did the best I could for a long time. This is what I need now.

Besides that big news, I also went back to PT to try to decrease the frequency of my migraines. My PT and I spoke a bit about cranio-cervical instability, as one of the orders from my neurologist was for cervical traction. (In the words of my PT, “If I did that to you, I'd probably take your head right off.") There's a new spinal surgeon starting at the orthopedic group I go to; my PT thought she might be worth seeing to talk about cervical flexion/extension fluoroscopy and treatment. Never a dull moment.