Dear Dr. R******:
Recently I read an online article about the explosion in the number of Americans receiving disability from the federal government. In fact, that same government now pays out more for disabilities than it does for food stamps and welfare combined.
Recently I read an online article about the explosion in the number of Americans receiving disability from the federal government. In fact, that same government now pays out more for disabilities than it does for food stamps and welfare combined.
Certainly many people receiving aid deserve this assistance. They have suffer tragic injuries or contract horrific illnesses that prevent them from working.
But after perusing some of the sample cases involving disabilities—the women who weep at night because of their arduous day-jobs especially snared my attention (Doc, I too can weep at night if necessary, particularly if I am looking at my bank account)—I realized that under the current guidelines I may qualify for federal disability. According to the article, my college education is a strike against me, but I nonetheless think you may find the following circumstances conducive to promoting my cause.
First, when I was sixteen years old, I was accepted into a special summer program for high school students interested in medical careers. I spent that summer working in the operating and recovery rooms of Forsyth Memorial Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. During that time I witnessed various surgeries—a nephrectomy, an open heart operation, and dozens of other operations on various parts of the anatomy. I toted buckets of blood and urine from surgery to the disposal point, and can still smell the pungent odor created by the steel bucket interacting with those liquids. I carried an amputated leg, wrapped up in gauze and looking like a full Christmas stocking, from surgery to pathology. One day I observed part of an operation on a woman suffering from sinus cancer. (I won’t go into the details here: suffice it to say that one of the nurses became nauseated and had to leave the operating room). Numerous patients in recovery vomited on me, and I once helped change the dressing on a burn victim so badly charred I could not discern whether the man was black or white.
When recounting these cases recently to one of my sons, he remarked, “You probably qualify for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.” Doc, I was only sixteen: what do you think? Do I have a shot? I vividly remember all these moments. Have I unknowingly borne a crushing burden all these years?
I also spent nearly four years of my early life in two military schools. There was a lot of yelling and cursing, and in one of the schools hazing and physical punishment were commonplace. Two teachers, both good men, whipped me with belts. A friend in the eighth grade at Staunton Military Academy once threw a screwdriver and nailed me with the point in the head, and another friend gave me a concussion by jumping on an metal-spring bed while I was on the floor beneath the bed. Would these torments explain anything? I am sure these incidents damaged me in some way.
When I was twenty-four, a woman I loved left me for another man. I was depressed for a long time, a life-changing event that led me to jettison graduate school to become a writer. Doc, that decision cost me years of income. Does that qualify me?
After abandoning my graduate studies in the summer of 1975, I spent eighteen months in Boston writing, working in a book store, and living like a pauper among drug addicts, prostitutes, thieves, and other sporty characters, including a psychopathic jewelry store robber just out of Walpole State Prison. The tenants in my building included a witch, a sweet girl who slept with a dentist to have her teeth repaired, a man who burglarized my apartment, a platoon of homosexuals and lesbians, a transvestite, a man undergoing a sex change operation, and a man who, rumor had it, really did find dogs to be a man’s best friend.(As my heroin-addicted neighbor once remarked to me, “Do you realize we’re the only heterosexual floor in the building?”) Doc, this poor dumb boy from North Carolina spent those eighteen months gape-mouthed and pop-eyed, getting more of an education in humanity than he had ever received in college. Surely exposure to a culture whose mores were more bizarre to me than those of the Pygmies might qualify me for some sort of mental disability?
Shortly after marrying my wife Kris, we became the house parents for Chi Omega at the University of Virginia. During our five years there I underwent several harsh encounters with members of fraternity houses in the neighborhood. I was spat on, cursed, threatened with violence, and was once knocked unconscious by a drunken frat boy. (The bum sucker-punched me). Dealing with these guys was no picnic, Doc, and sometimes I think about those days. Could those memories be labeled as some sort of psychotic flash-backs?
Then there were the years my wife and I operated a bed-and-breakfast. Forget that we were in debt and broke for twenty years: do you know what it’s like never to parade around your own house in your pajamas? To cook eggs every morning from April to November? To force four children to be quiet all the time? The horror, the horror! (I wonder: would my children qualify for disability as well?)
When my wife died ten years ago, I found myself solely responsible for my children. My youngest was only eight years old. This was another traumatizing event in my life. I won’t serve up the particulars here, but imagine if your wife died and left you with all those children of yours. Tough, right? Stressful? Disabling, perhaps?
Two years after my wife died, some friends encouraged me to try internet dating. With this quixotic adventure came even more stress. Sure, there were evenings of high comedy and moments of attraction, but most of the women were divorcees bitter about their marriages. Once I composed an article about this experience titled “Crazy Ladies,” but now I am wondering: what if I’m the crazy one? And if I am crazy, would my lunacy not qualify me to join the ranks of the broken and the disabled?
Then there are my medical conditions. I know you keep telling me—you always seem somewhat astounded—that I am in excellent health. (To tell the truth, I’m astounded as well). But what about that time I was hospitalized for five days with 15% lung capacity and no one could figure out what was wrong with me? Sure, sure, the specialists kept calling it allergic pneumonia, but they didn’t really know what had afflicted me. That was pretty traumatic: I almost died, and just thinking about that hospital bed makes me feel disabled.
And now—well, Doc, my back hurts from time to time. Today when I was teaching, for example, I had shooting pains on the left lower side. I concealed the pain from my students, but every once in a while I flinched. It was like someone jabbing a needle into my spine. You may remember that I previously cured my back problems by sleeping on the floor for a year. What if I slept on a really soft mattress for the same period of time? Would the subsequent back pain qualify me for a disability?
And sometimes my knees creak when I climb stairs. Where I work, I have to climb two flights of stairs to my classroom, and because I leave that classroom several times a day, my hikes add up to a lot of stairs. If statistics would help my case, I could keep track of the number of stairs climbed each day. Before I lost all that weight four years ago, my knees actually crunched on stairwells. What do you think—should I gain those pounds back and go for the knee ploy?
If the knees don’t cut the mustard, how about fatigue? The last time I felt completely rested was June, 1969. Sleep is no friend of mine, and often during the day I find myself longing for a nap. Sometimes in the late evening I fall asleep at my desk while watching reruns of Frasier on my computer. Talk about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome—Doc, I am as spent as an old coin! Are my failed attempts at slumber reasonable cause to declare me impaired?
As you know, I am a writer as well as a teacher. I earn a small portion of my income putting out essays and reviews, and have even published two books, both high-stress endeavors. Now as everyone knows, writers drink a lot, suffer depression and neuroses, and go crazy at the drop of a hat. (Yes, yes, that’s a cliché: live with it). For nearly forty years, the Muse has possessed, pleasured, and plagued me. Surely by now I qualify for disability as a reward for my artistic suffering and angst.
You also know me as a Catholic. I joined the Church at age forty, and my faith brings me great strength, but having crossed the Tiber a score of years ago, I find myself possessed by a Catholic sense of guilt. On numerous occasions, this sense of guilt is justified: sin has darkened my door. (Sometimes, frankly, sin just struts through that door and makes itself right at home). At present, I take those sins to a confessional, a priest, and the Big Kahuna in the sky. But now I wonder--would I be better off seeing a shrink? Could I then be declared disabled?
Finally, I spend a lot of time alone. Doc, I mean it, a prisoner in solitary has nothing on me. Often the craziest thoughts occur when I am sitting on my porch or working alone in my apartment. Sometimes, for instance, despite all the hardships recounted above, I feel grateful to be alive and productive. Insane, right? On other occasions, I recollect my past and think: Well, you’ve lived a full, rich life. How nuts is that? And despite all the mourning and weeping here in this vale of tears, dawn always finds me sitting on my front porch and falling in love with the world all over again. Certifiable? I think so.
Doc, I’m not asking you to move mountains. I’m not even asking you to move mole-hills. I’m just looking for what’s rightfully mine. After working and suffering for forty-five years, I just want to enjoy a slice of the good old American pie.
It’s a small favor I’m asking, Doc. Declare me disabled.
All the best from your infirm patient,
Jeff Minick
P.S. If possible, please obtain for me one of those little handicapped thingamajigs to hang from the mirror of my car. Finding parking spaces at the YMCA is dicey, but there are always three or four vacancies in the handicapped lot.
But after perusing some of the sample cases involving disabilities—the women who weep at night because of their arduous day-jobs especially snared my attention (Doc, I too can weep at night if necessary, particularly if I am looking at my bank account)—I realized that under the current guidelines I may qualify for federal disability. According to the article, my college education is a strike against me, but I nonetheless think you may find the following circumstances conducive to promoting my cause.
First, when I was sixteen years old, I was accepted into a special summer program for high school students interested in medical careers. I spent that summer working in the operating and recovery rooms of Forsyth Memorial Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. During that time I witnessed various surgeries—a nephrectomy, an open heart operation, and dozens of other operations on various parts of the anatomy. I toted buckets of blood and urine from surgery to the disposal point, and can still smell the pungent odor created by the steel bucket interacting with those liquids. I carried an amputated leg, wrapped up in gauze and looking like a full Christmas stocking, from surgery to pathology. One day I observed part of an operation on a woman suffering from sinus cancer. (I won’t go into the details here: suffice it to say that one of the nurses became nauseated and had to leave the operating room). Numerous patients in recovery vomited on me, and I once helped change the dressing on a burn victim so badly charred I could not discern whether the man was black or white.
When recounting these cases recently to one of my sons, he remarked, “You probably qualify for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.” Doc, I was only sixteen: what do you think? Do I have a shot? I vividly remember all these moments. Have I unknowingly borne a crushing burden all these years?
I also spent nearly four years of my early life in two military schools. There was a lot of yelling and cursing, and in one of the schools hazing and physical punishment were commonplace. Two teachers, both good men, whipped me with belts. A friend in the eighth grade at Staunton Military Academy once threw a screwdriver and nailed me with the point in the head, and another friend gave me a concussion by jumping on an metal-spring bed while I was on the floor beneath the bed. Would these torments explain anything? I am sure these incidents damaged me in some way.
When I was twenty-four, a woman I loved left me for another man. I was depressed for a long time, a life-changing event that led me to jettison graduate school to become a writer. Doc, that decision cost me years of income. Does that qualify me?
After abandoning my graduate studies in the summer of 1975, I spent eighteen months in Boston writing, working in a book store, and living like a pauper among drug addicts, prostitutes, thieves, and other sporty characters, including a psychopathic jewelry store robber just out of Walpole State Prison. The tenants in my building included a witch, a sweet girl who slept with a dentist to have her teeth repaired, a man who burglarized my apartment, a platoon of homosexuals and lesbians, a transvestite, a man undergoing a sex change operation, and a man who, rumor had it, really did find dogs to be a man’s best friend.(As my heroin-addicted neighbor once remarked to me, “Do you realize we’re the only heterosexual floor in the building?”) Doc, this poor dumb boy from North Carolina spent those eighteen months gape-mouthed and pop-eyed, getting more of an education in humanity than he had ever received in college. Surely exposure to a culture whose mores were more bizarre to me than those of the Pygmies might qualify me for some sort of mental disability?
Shortly after marrying my wife Kris, we became the house parents for Chi Omega at the University of Virginia. During our five years there I underwent several harsh encounters with members of fraternity houses in the neighborhood. I was spat on, cursed, threatened with violence, and was once knocked unconscious by a drunken frat boy. (The bum sucker-punched me). Dealing with these guys was no picnic, Doc, and sometimes I think about those days. Could those memories be labeled as some sort of psychotic flash-backs?
Then there were the years my wife and I operated a bed-and-breakfast. Forget that we were in debt and broke for twenty years: do you know what it’s like never to parade around your own house in your pajamas? To cook eggs every morning from April to November? To force four children to be quiet all the time? The horror, the horror! (I wonder: would my children qualify for disability as well?)
When my wife died ten years ago, I found myself solely responsible for my children. My youngest was only eight years old. This was another traumatizing event in my life. I won’t serve up the particulars here, but imagine if your wife died and left you with all those children of yours. Tough, right? Stressful? Disabling, perhaps?
Two years after my wife died, some friends encouraged me to try internet dating. With this quixotic adventure came even more stress. Sure, there were evenings of high comedy and moments of attraction, but most of the women were divorcees bitter about their marriages. Once I composed an article about this experience titled “Crazy Ladies,” but now I am wondering: what if I’m the crazy one? And if I am crazy, would my lunacy not qualify me to join the ranks of the broken and the disabled?
Then there are my medical conditions. I know you keep telling me—you always seem somewhat astounded—that I am in excellent health. (To tell the truth, I’m astounded as well). But what about that time I was hospitalized for five days with 15% lung capacity and no one could figure out what was wrong with me? Sure, sure, the specialists kept calling it allergic pneumonia, but they didn’t really know what had afflicted me. That was pretty traumatic: I almost died, and just thinking about that hospital bed makes me feel disabled.
And now—well, Doc, my back hurts from time to time. Today when I was teaching, for example, I had shooting pains on the left lower side. I concealed the pain from my students, but every once in a while I flinched. It was like someone jabbing a needle into my spine. You may remember that I previously cured my back problems by sleeping on the floor for a year. What if I slept on a really soft mattress for the same period of time? Would the subsequent back pain qualify me for a disability?
And sometimes my knees creak when I climb stairs. Where I work, I have to climb two flights of stairs to my classroom, and because I leave that classroom several times a day, my hikes add up to a lot of stairs. If statistics would help my case, I could keep track of the number of stairs climbed each day. Before I lost all that weight four years ago, my knees actually crunched on stairwells. What do you think—should I gain those pounds back and go for the knee ploy?
If the knees don’t cut the mustard, how about fatigue? The last time I felt completely rested was June, 1969. Sleep is no friend of mine, and often during the day I find myself longing for a nap. Sometimes in the late evening I fall asleep at my desk while watching reruns of Frasier on my computer. Talk about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome—Doc, I am as spent as an old coin! Are my failed attempts at slumber reasonable cause to declare me impaired?
As you know, I am a writer as well as a teacher. I earn a small portion of my income putting out essays and reviews, and have even published two books, both high-stress endeavors. Now as everyone knows, writers drink a lot, suffer depression and neuroses, and go crazy at the drop of a hat. (Yes, yes, that’s a cliché: live with it). For nearly forty years, the Muse has possessed, pleasured, and plagued me. Surely by now I qualify for disability as a reward for my artistic suffering and angst.
You also know me as a Catholic. I joined the Church at age forty, and my faith brings me great strength, but having crossed the Tiber a score of years ago, I find myself possessed by a Catholic sense of guilt. On numerous occasions, this sense of guilt is justified: sin has darkened my door. (Sometimes, frankly, sin just struts through that door and makes itself right at home). At present, I take those sins to a confessional, a priest, and the Big Kahuna in the sky. But now I wonder--would I be better off seeing a shrink? Could I then be declared disabled?
Finally, I spend a lot of time alone. Doc, I mean it, a prisoner in solitary has nothing on me. Often the craziest thoughts occur when I am sitting on my porch or working alone in my apartment. Sometimes, for instance, despite all the hardships recounted above, I feel grateful to be alive and productive. Insane, right? On other occasions, I recollect my past and think: Well, you’ve lived a full, rich life. How nuts is that? And despite all the mourning and weeping here in this vale of tears, dawn always finds me sitting on my front porch and falling in love with the world all over again. Certifiable? I think so.
Doc, I’m not asking you to move mountains. I’m not even asking you to move mole-hills. I’m just looking for what’s rightfully mine. After working and suffering for forty-five years, I just want to enjoy a slice of the good old American pie.
It’s a small favor I’m asking, Doc. Declare me disabled.
All the best from your infirm patient,
Jeff Minick
P.S. If possible, please obtain for me one of those little handicapped thingamajigs to hang from the mirror of my car. Finding parking spaces at the YMCA is dicey, but there are always three or four vacancies in the handicapped lot.
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