It didn’t take all that long for me to realize that being awarded full disability benefits was, alas, but a temporary achievement.
Only 18 months after being awarded disability, I received an extremely sobering letter: I needed to complete both medical, and psychological, re-evaluations. This was imperative, to determine whether or not I continued to meet the criteria for being disabled.
My first response was that this was a cruel April Fool’s Day joke. However, it happened to be a cold, blustery day in early February. After all, who exactly had failed to comprehend that all of my medical diagnoses were c-h-r-o-n-i-c?
By definition, this meant that there were no cures for any of my multiple diagnoses. Instead, there were only specific medications to address individual symptom severities. In addition, there were disease-modifying medications that delayed, but that did not prevent, disease progression.
Here we go again, I sighed deeply. So, I resigned myself to be re-evaluated at the disability determination office. Ironically enough, this very same office continued to contact me on a regular basis, to assess my interest in interviewing for a full-time psychologist position.
