Screwed by My Government Again

I need a lawyer. I just got the letter today....Social Security disability was denied to me...my last and only hope of surviving this ongoing nightmare.

I suppose being 55 years old with a GED who has atrophy after being out of work for 3 years, and who has degenerative arthritis in both the neck and lower spine (and stress and depression for the most obvious reasons) doesn't qualify as "disabled" because the Social Security administration says the "severity" of my disabilities doesn't preclude me from doing "substantial" work, meaning it can be part-time work earning at least $900 a month.

They also say my condition shouldn't last for more than 12 months, even though it's gotten worse over the last several years. My back can't get any better (it can only be made to feel better with 2 prescriptions I'm now taking). But my condition can only remain the same or get worse from putting more strain on it. There's no cure for arthritis.

They say that I'm skilled enough and healthy enough to work 20 hours a week for $10.00/hr gross (or at McDonald's who pays about $8.50/hr X 24 hours a week = $900 gross). After taxes, that's how much, $700 a month for rent, heat, bus fare, and food? They say I'm in good enough shape to stand at a McDonald's window 4 or 5 hours a day and earn enough to live on?

I'm 7 years away from qualifying for an early SS retirement with reduced benefits. I'm only qualified for the service and hospitality industry (which is not hiring in Las Vegas anyway), and it's the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. I no longer have a car or any cash in the bank, and I can barely get out of bed in the morning, and yet they say I'm perfectly ok to work. Well, maybe I can do a congressman's job but that's about it. Name one boss who will hire me.

My doctor said some people with a much worse case of arthritis than I have are denied SS disability and some people with a far less severe case are approved SS benefits. So it's more like a pot-luck lottery getting qualified for disability benefits. In Nevada where I live I have read that the odds were good for first-time approvals (a 50-50 chance), so it's just my fu*ked up luck that I fell on the wrong side of the fence. When will something in my damn life ever go right?

This country and our whole system of government is totally screwed up. I busted my back for almost 40 years and when I finally needed help I'm told that everything is perfectly ok, that I should just go get a job and go about my business. RIGHT!

I really wish I had a "nuke" right about now. Before, I was ready to take myself out, but now I'm so damned pissed at this government that I'd like to take out a few @ssholes with me!

All this time going to appointments, making calls, filling out forms, etc...and all the damn waiting, hoping to finally get some kind of good news for a change, but all I ever get in another damn knife in my back. It really gets old after a while.

Now I have to go through more months of appealing their decision by filling out more papers, getting a lawyer, making phone calls, and more waiting, etc....hoping to win an appeal. I'm so frustrated and depressed and at my wits end that I might just have to resort to "PLAN A" again. This really sucks big time!!!

But HEY!!!!!!!!! Let's send a few more billion to the middle east, let's build some more aircraft carriers, let's bail out a few more banks and corporations, let's give oil subsidies away, let's give congress a raise, let's save a desert turtle....ANYTHING but give Bud his itty-bitty disability check!!!!

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