Comments From a New Cripple, Oh, shit!

Today,  I'm sending in the last bit of paperwork to the Teamsters, and when it processes, I'll be officially retired, and money will magically appear in my checking account every month.  If I'm reading the paperwork correctly, and I very well may not be, I was eligible for crippled retirement about a year and a half ago, and my first retirement deposit should be retroactive back to that date.

Hoofuckingray!  God bless the Union.

As nice as that will be when it happens, it's not going to happen soon enough to forestall the looming and certain economic doom about to befall the Enore household.  I will be able to keep a place to live, always a good thing, and electricity and gas in the place.  Everything else is a toss-up until the Union begins pumping MY money to me.  So, it can't happen soon enough.

All new Workman's Comp cripples, please pay attention!

I knew this pinch-point was coming.  I've seen it off in the distance for many  months now, without knowing exactly when it would befall me, but here it is.  There is a point at which the Workmans Comp insurance company decides there is nothing more that can be done for you medically, and you get moved from "temporarily fully disabled," to "permanently disabled with X% disability," and when that happens, your income decreases hugely, in my case more than $2600 a month.  Nothing I could do to stop that from happening, it's just a part, a stupid one, of the process.

However, I could have done something to take up the slack, simply by filing my retirement paperwork with the Union in  a timely fashion.  That sounds easy, but for me, and I suspect for many others in my position, it wasn't.

As you might imagine, those of us  shoved into being a cripple thru an accident of some sort, often have emotional problems adjusting to all that comes along with crippledom, besides just coming to grips with being crips.  (Huh?)  I've had my share of emotional crap to handle, and with drugs, I'm doing ok...but one of the things I've noticed is that I no longer deal especially well with some types of stress.

What I'm getting at is that it took me months to get into an emotional situation where I could just accept that I am already retired, whether I wanted to be or not, and all that remained was the paperwork. Once I faced that, it took a couple more months to face actually doing the paperwork, and sending it in...which I finally did a month or so ago, and am just now completing some detail work about how I want to be paid.

I could have done this months ago and been sitting fat right now.

I fucked myself.  (Actually, if I could fuck myself, I doubt that I'd ever leave the house...but I digress...)  Because I couldn't find the emotional gumption to face reality and to do a little bit of paperwork in a reasonable and timely manner, I'm going to be putting, not only myself, but my daughter thru a very ugly and trying time, from one day very soon till after the first of the year.  My fault...and completely needless.  Merry Christmas, Jeny Marie!

So...anyone reading this in any stage of becoming a cripple...pay heed.  My story is not an uncommon one, and no one will tell you that this is coming if you don't figure it out for yourself. In my case, I'll recover.  I'll be bruised and skinny, but I'll recover once my retirement shows itself. But a lot of people can't or won't recover from it, unless they're really smart, and really honest with themselves.

YOU'RE the guys I'm talking to.