Happy Thursday! It’s July 2nd today, so only two days until the Mighty 4th! Hope everyone has plans to cookout and watch fireworks somewhere. Most of the firework displays in and around Charlotte, NC have been cancelled due to (Drum roll please…) Covid, so we are going to light some of our own in the neighborhood. Should be good times!
So! Part III of my story about being labeled “Disabled” (Rhymed!) for the purposes of work. Bored yet? It’s not quite the jaw-dropping, nail-biting thriller that maybe I (and you?) thought it was going to be? Oh well… we’ll just have to deal.
Anyway, I left off at the part where the executive of my group sent me a message suggesting I file for Short-Term Disability (STD) versus just quitting. After discussing the option with my wife… I made the call and… just like that… I was put on STD with the request to follow-up with my doctor to complete some paperwork. I hadn’t really discussed the idea of going out on disability with my doctor, so I was a bit nervous about having the discussion with him. He was a good doctor in a lot of ways, but not the kind that invited a more personal relationship or even “banter” during an appointment. Like I said, making that appointment… I really didn’t know what to expect. 🙁
To make a 1 hour doctor appointment really short…. 🙂 the doctor was in agreement with my decision to leave the work place. He said that my experiences and symptoms would make working very difficult for just about anyone… so he submitted the required paperwork and I was officially on STD. Yay. Right? Only not. My mind immediately goes to thoughts like, “Am I turning into a societal leech living off of the efforts of others?” or “No one is going to understand why I’m on disability because I look normal.” and “What do I say when people ask ‘What do you do for a living’?”
I may be going out on a limb here, but doesn’t the word “Disabled” conjure up images of a disabled war veteran missing an arm? Or a young child in a wheelchair with obvious signs of cerebral palsy or some other God awful disease? At the same time, don’t we sometimes look at people who have no outward signs of a disability and say or think to ourselves, “Whatever! There is nothing wrong with him! He’s just getting free money!” or “I could never go on disability because only people with no integrity or conscience do that kind of thing and make other people support them”. Maybe it’s just me, but many thoughts like those crossed my mind thought the initial steps of that process.
Trust me… the whole judging without really knowing… it’s a slippery slope and I’ll admit to being guilty of hypocrisy… at least with my “inside” voice. 🙁 It’s something I work on because it’s easy to pass judgement, but, perhaps, not so easy to actually be judged? And.. trust me again… sometimes just a look can fill a whole book when it comes to passing judgment on someone else. Kindness is better and should always come first.
Back to the story… To maintain and qualify for ongoing disability for a neurological disorder like MS, I had to meet with psychologists and participate in full day memory/cognitive testing. Disability payments can be costly to corporate plans, so they want to make sure, to the extent they are able, that someone who says they have a hard time remembering things… is actually having a hard time remembering things. 🙂 Again, I was nervous (I have said that phrase a lot… to be honest… I’m not a real nervous kind of person.. .you’ll just have to take my word for it) to take a test like this because… well… what if I passed? What if the psychologist said it was all in my head and that Im actually still quite capable of working? Fortunately (Cant believe that’s the right word, but it is), the testing showed that the issues I had complained about were actually true and that I would be approved to remain on disability.
Good and bad… that one. So, never to work again? What if I feel better? What if new medicines come out that change the game in real ways? Or, from a different perspective… I no longer have access to a 401K savings plan! My income has just been cut in half (Still it’s better than nothing)! Will my family maintain our current lifestyle (Easy answer here… my smoking’-hot wife has gone back to work and is killing it!)? At the end of the day, we’re blessed and just have to learn a new set of rules to live by. 🙂
I’ll leave that here for the time being. A future post will address the topic of Social Security Disability as that’s also a part of my story and probably anyone else who is on a corporate disability plan. Just too much in that topic to get started here!
Take care and will probably post early next week! Or so it is to be hoped! 😉
