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So with February came a thick packet in the mail for me from
Social Security. As I would typically get the mail for the
mobile home from the park's box during the middle of the day while
mother was working, I was able to open it up and scan through it in
the living room. Many pages of dense text which talked about the
decision of the hearing but nowhere in it was ''You Won!'' Looking
it over a second time I did see a line on the front page that said
'Notice Of Favorable Decision' though it didn't say for who.
I collected up all the pages and went to my bedroom for a detailed
read, making sure I didn't leave anything behind that my mother might
find and take.
Reading it word for word, when I reached the section noting that I
would be hearing from Social Security soon about my benefit level
and back benefit payment it started to sink in that I had
actually won the appeal. Now I had two wins to Legal Aid's zero.
Fifteen years later Social Security accidentally sent me the
detailed judge's determination notes and I learned from them that,
since the judge decided there was truly something wrong with me but
there wasn't enough medical information to support a claim, he looked
to the original psychologist's report from my hospital stay where he
noted that I, at most, suffered from an 'adjustment disorder'. Not
knowing how serious an 'adjustment disorder' was, the judge found
that to be my debilitating condition and granted my Disability
claim... For those not familiar, an 'adjustment disorder' is a
response to an actual stress in your life that you haven't overcome.
When I told a psychologist friend about it those fifteen years later,
he burst out laughing as it ''was deemed to be one of the least
significant psychological disorders'' and ''in fact was likely to be
removed from the list.''
Reflecting on it now, though, I've come to find the label very apt
for me at that time. As I was having emotional stress from the fact
that I couldn't get a doctor to treat my intestinal problems. And
further, I was unsure about my strange puberty which I didn't know
how to address. So, in retrospect, I think it was an accurate
diagnosis which helped to get me out of a terrible situation
and into only a bad one.
What? You thought winning disability benefits would put
everything to rights?
I subsequently found there would be a two to three month period while
Social Security sorted everything out, paid the state a refund for
any aid they had given me in the meantime, and then retroactively
cover any unpaid medical expenses with Medicaid.
For the first time in a long time I saw a short term future for
myself. With luck I could get my first apartment with the assured
monthly income and be out of my mother's mobile home for the first
time in six years. When I moved in, in Nineteen Eighty-Three, she
had been longing for company and was happy to have me there, but it
was only after the first few months that it started to sour and since
being out of work due to my health problems, it had become
downright
unpleasant. Yet now with the monthly check and Medicaid coverage
I would be able to once again try to find a doctor to review and
address my health problems and possibly, one day, cure them and I
could go back to work.
Thrilled by my coming escape, I avidly delved into my writing
projects. After the first few comic serial scripts I had made for
The Doctor Who Report, I had finally gotten the hang of it and came
up with a block buster two-parter that I was sure was going to knock
our reader's socks off. I wrote the first part and the writer in me
wanted to write the second part, but I fought off the urge as I
wanted to pace myself and instead wrote my first speculative script
for 'the other show' I was interested in on television. Once done
and happy with it, I decided to provide it to the writer's group for
review and input. It was the first thing I submitted to them that
didn't get good reviews. Digging into why, it simply stemmed from
them not understanding or being familiar with television script
format and not knowing what to make of it. Ultimately, I decided for
myself I should have done better with that script after reviewing it
merely a year later.
But part one of my new two-part comic serial story went over well
with the artist as he delivered the next issue's drawings. Then he
really got excited when I told him how the second part would go and
he took the new script with him to get to work on the next issue's
installment. With all other content ready for TDWR I was off to
Jeff's to assemble it in the desktop publishing software and print up
the masters. I then took the masters to the copy shop the next day
to produce all of the reduced pages and get them home to assemble
into the booklet issues. They were mailed off by the end of the
week.
Toward the end of February, while I had been keeping late night hours
of going to bed around seven in the morning and getting up by two in
the afternoon over the previous years as part of avoiding my mother.
I found myself feeling very wobbly and ended up going to bed barely
more than eight hours later. I would later wake up feeling very
strange and would later have this experience diagnosed as my first
stroke...
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