I’m once more participating in A Chronic Voice’s writing prompts. This month’s words are: summarizing, crossing, moving, rebuilding, and expecting. I’ve been thinking about writing about pacing for a while now, and these words felt useful for that process. When the summary is too short So to summarize what most doctors tell their patients: “You…
For many of us who become disabled, the recognition and acceptance process isn’t easy, and all too often, employment and disability are inextricably linked. For many of us, part of becoming disabled is losing our employment. The grief and loss of becoming disabled is often entangled deeply with the loss of income, and often the…
Functional Neurological Disorder is a common but poorly understood condition. Being diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder isn’t just overwhelming for you as the patient, but it also can be a challenge for your doctor as well. The symptoms look like neurological symptoms(each FNDer may have a different symptom set), but don’t have the usual causes…
It can be a hard decision to make. There are actually two different programs that are often referred to as disability, and while you don’t need to choose which to apply for (they share the same application and are both run by the Social Security Administration), it is important to understand what they are and…
If you are not experiencing an immediately life-threatening emergency, please double-check with your doctor if at all possible to see if there is a reasonable alternative to going to the ER. Not only are ER visits substantially more expensive than regular doctor or hospital visits, but they also are spaces where you have almost no…
I’m not trying to be discouraging or to tell you not to apply. I have been supported by SSDI(social security disability insurance) for well over 15 years, and I know that my quality of life would be much worse if I were not on this program. What I do want to do is…
There is a lot of information out there about what you can’t do – working after you have applied for disability is risky. Furthering your education is also a dicey proposition. During those months to years of waiting for a decision to be reached, what can you do? What should you do? Do you really…
Filing for disability put me in a depressive funk that left me exhausted, and the process of filing the paperwork literally took me weeks because I couldn’t work on it for more than ten to fifteen minutes at a time before I was physically unable to continue. Filing for disability, in itself, was an emotional…
When you are injured or ill, there is a lot of focus on healing your body, but your mind’s health(mental health) is a huge factor in your recovery process. Since this is mental health awareness month I wanted to talk about the relationship between physical and mental health. The question I have for you is…
This month is mental health awareness month! In honor of that, I intend to make sure that my posts for the month have more of a mental health focus. Today, I want to talk about the stigma that is placed on mental health, and what we can do to fight it off. So what is…