Further on the forms:
Reduced Retirement Benefits
Because of your age, you are also eligible to apply for Social Security Retirement Benefits. You may wish to do so while your application for disability benefits is being processed. Disability applications take longer to process than other types of Social Security claims (about 90 to 120 days). If your application is approved, your first disability benefit will be paid for the sixth full month after the date we determine you became disabled.
However, if you decide to apply for reduced retirement, you should know that any retirement benefits paid for months before the determined month of your first disability payment will cause a permanent benefit reduction. Conversely, if the determined month of your first disability payment is before the month you elected to receive reduced retirement benefits, there will be no reduction.
Select \’Yes\’ if you wish to file for reduced retirement benefits while you are waiting for a decision on your disability claim.
Select \’No\’ if you do not wish to file for reduced retirement benefits. We will contact you to discuss this decision
I\’m 22. Generally I don\’t feel like I\’ll make it to 32 at the rate things are going. I need to pay off the thousands of dollars in medical bills that I owe from the past nine years, and they want to know if I want to reduce my potential lousy back benefits by putting money toward a Social Security retirement fund that might not even exist by the time I am old enough to retire? I might be disabled, but I\’m not fucking dumb, for chrissakes. Who makes these policies?
To claim disability you have to fill out the \”Disability Report,\” which allots two pages for doctors and hospitals visited where you have records and one page for medications and medical tests run on you. If you run out of room, you are provided with two \”Remarks\” pages to provide the rest of your information. They kindly ask that you not attach any more paper as it gives the social workers more to look at, and each Report should only take 60 minutes to examine.
I don\’t know of a single disabled person who can fit their information in that room. My medications alone take up an entire remarks page, as do all the doctors I have seen in the last six months. They want to know all the doctors, tests, and medications I have had since I became ill. Have you SEEN my accumulated medical file? It takes up an entire filing cabinet drawer and then some, as I can\’t find all my files! I can\’t even lift it. You want me to break fifty pounds and ten years down into four pages? FUCK YOU.
I started \”legally\” working at age 16 and stopped at age 20 when it was determind I was disabled. At that point I had earned approx. (give or take a few weeks) $7,381.81 of taxable income that I have filed for, e.g., for employers that had me fill out tax forms. I retracted (wow, something cool I found out a few years ago thanks to a lawyer and accountant was that you can retract your taxes if you later decide you don\’t like them) my taxes from the years I was meagerly self employed. I also never bothered to file from the various \”contracting\” and \”independent\” jobs I have done (which gives a whole new meaning to \”under the table\” wages), which is sort of upsetting because had I been able to do that, I could have tripled the amount I paid \”into the system.\” But it doesn\’t matter anymore. Hooray for \”developmental disability.\”
Previously everyone was worried I had worked too few hours to be granted SSDI, and now it\’s somewhat unclear (though will be made clear in the next few weeks) if I worked just enough to make it under the line. Being sick since age 15 helps, and being declared disabled by the state at age 20 is even better, but having put $7,900 into the SS machine (even over five years, even though I was not a student while working underage, and even though $13,000 per year is considered the poverty line for one person) makes it look like I can work. Yeah, if you call working for three weeks and then ending up sick in bed for the next three months \”work.\” Most people don\’t.
I think 90% of the reason I\’ve stopped bothering to keep up with people is because I\’ve reached the point where I can\’t take one more \”did you get a job yet?\” or \”what are you doing for money now?\” from people who have known me for more than two years and have had this whole mess explained to them countless times. Now that\’s what I call fucking insensitive. No, I don\’t have a job, and until medical science comes up with some kind of cure, it looks like I\’ll never have what you consider to be a \”real job\” ever again. And I\’m sick of you looking at me like that with disgust in your ignorant eyes, so I choose not to look anymore. And I\’m finally not sorry if that offends you. You don\’t believe me? Fine. I\’ll look the other way. But don\’t try to take the issue up with the person who is in the position of having to prepare 75% of my meals, bathe me half the week and bring me my medication almost every night because I am too sick to do it. Try to debate the issue with him and he\’ll probably punch your lights out.
Went to get my allergy shots today. A month and a half ago my doctor\’s office closed and I got transfered to the main office (her\’s was a satellite office). I have yet to be assigned to an actual doctor or to see a doctor at the office. For the past six weeks the new office has claimed they can\’t find my files. Every time I go in to get my shots they say they don\’t have my serum, and then low and behold, after I prompt them they are able to find it in the mini-fridge. I then have to explain that I get two allergy shots — one in each arm, from two separate vials. The nurses (always a different nurse every week; I have never seen a docotor\’s office/clinic with so many nurses!) are always very confused by this, even when I show them the paperwork with the instructions. Each week they are supposed to sign off that they have given me the serum.
When I was there today I finally saw the nurse I used to see at the satellite office. She knows me by name on sight. I went to her office every week for a few months, after all. She took one look at my serum paperwork and asked me if I\’ve been having any allergic reactions lately. \”Um… unbearable itching to the point of panic attacks all last weekend, sore throat, sore eyes, swollen glands, cough, sore muscles, sinus migraines, chest pains, wheezing, pressure in the face and ears, trouble breathing, sensitivity to food and light and sound and smoke and odors… but I figured it was just the FMS flaring up due to stress and the weather changes. Why?\”
Because for the last six weeks the nurses at the doctors office have been giving me the wrong amount of serum. And they haven\’t been signing off on the injections and none of the supervisors had noticed.
Turns out, I haven\’t been dying this past month. I probably haven\’t been having some randomly bad FMS flare up. My Allegra-D hasn\’t suddenly stopped working and left me defenseless against the onslaught of Spring. No, the damn nurses have been literally overdosing me on my allergy serum, and all my symptoms have been in line with having allergic reactions. I have spent the last month nearly bed bound. People have DIED because their dosages were adminstered incorrectly like this. I\’m supposed to receive .1, .2, .3, .4, .5, then .2., 3, .4, .5, then .3, etc. and switch serums as I progress. Instead, I have been receiving .5 for the past month of all the little things I am allergic to, plus the fucker that nearly killed me in 2000, mold. They\’ve been fucking injecting me with too much MOLD and I\’ve been wondering why I\’ve been having coughing fits and haven\’t been able to move and I just thought it was my FMS doing some weird thing that it\’s randomly prone to do at times. BUT NO. THEY\’VE BEEN FUCKING POISONING ME.
The top two things I have learned so far at age 22: medicine and government are full of shit. was right. A piece of paper saying you graduated from school X does not necessarily make you more qualified, responsible, or knowledgable. As a starter, it means someone (not necessarily you) paid a shit load of money for that piece of paper. Whether or not you deserve to have that piece of paper is another story. Doctors are as clueless as everyone else.
I\’m tired. So fucking tired. Of fighting all this bullshit. Of watching Will go out or say he\’s going to go out and him having fun while I have to sit at home, sick, and he doesn\’t bother to try and come up with anything we could do together and he nixes all my suggestions. Of going out with him and then regretting it because one, I immediately feel ill, two, my feeling ill brings him down, three, my feeling ill brings me down because I\’m sick of feeling ill and trying to have fun and be happy and not succeeding. I\’m sick of sleeping and never feeling rested. I\’m sick of being in pain. I\’m sick of the cold. I\’m sick of being so sick that I have to call and cancel my doctor\’s appointments because I can\’t get myself to them. I wish I had some kind of faith in something so that I would have something to look forward to one day, even if that\’s when I\’m dead, but I don\’t. I don\’t want to die, because I don\’t believe in life after death, I don\’t believe in god, I don\’t believe in reincarnation, I don\’t believe in souls, I don\’t believe in \”spirits\” (just energy transferment). But I don\’t hate life, either. I adore life. I just hate mine, in this body, trying not to move because when I do I can feel every muscle screaming into the dark corner of my brain \”kill me\” so that I don\’t have to feel this anymore or be like this for god knows how long. Every day I hope it\’ll pass, and eventually it does, but it always comes back. What if one day it doesn\’t go away? Permanent generalized pain at a 4, okay, I\’ve learned to deal with that. Permanent generalized pain at a 9 with localized pain in four or more locations at a 10, for more than four hours a day, for the rest of my life, and the rest of those hours being only a very few notches lower on the pain scale? No thank you. I\’d rather swallow a bullet and never feel the salt breeze on my face again.
