The waiting is chronic and I don’t want jinx it by asking questions.
A year ago I qualified to apply for the Ontario Disability Support Program and it’s
been a slog. Two years ago I had surgery to rebuild my radiation-damaged heart;
I have new parts. Five years ago I was laid off from work. Thirty-five years
ago I was a teenager when I was treated with radiation for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Now I’m waiting to find out if I qualify for financial help.
Last year my analyst suggested I apply. it would make life
easier she said. She warned 80% are turned down at first. 40% make it on appeal.
You need to have patience and be tenacious.
There are a lot of hoops: a doctor needs to fill in the 14-page
Health Status Report including supporting test results and medical material.
You can write a letter saying how wrecked you are and that you can’t work.
Six weeks after my doctor sent the package, a letter
informed us we’d missed a page. My startled doctor fixed it and faxed it immediately.
ODSP give themselves 90 working days from receiving the complete document to
vet it. In January they were reviewing September applicants. At the end of
January they sent a rejection letter and invited me to appeal.
I went ninja. I found hospital chart records stating
radiation disease. All my “ist’s” wrote supporting letters outlining ailments
and possible outcomes. I rewrote my self-declaration clarifying anything vague.
To get it all together I needed a one-month extension.
In April ODSP sent a bureaucratic letter, which I read three
times before I realized my appeal worked. My son said, “Congratulations, you
are disabled!”
Six weeks later the follow-up letter hadn’t arrived. So I
called and spoke to my worker for the first time. It took four days for the financial
information list to travel by mail 15 blocks in downtown Toronto. The
caseworker has twenty-one days once she receives my financial docs to finalize my
application.
The list asks for five years of tax assessments, income
statements, one year of bank statements, credit card and line of credit
statements. Utility bill, tax bill, gas and hydro, insurance notice and mortgage
renewal, they need an affidavit about my son’s invisible biological father, 36
pages in all. I called to ask if could photocopy there, at pennies a page photocopying
this many is expensive, let alone the envelope and stamps to mail it back.
My worker seemed impressed
I’d amassed all the data in 3 days and invited me to come in.
The disability office is several degrees degenerated below any
other of the paired-down civic offices I have ever been in.
Outside the street kids are bunched up on the sidewalk. One young
lady tosses a tight ponytail, has tattoos up her cheekbones and a cigarette
behind her ear. Tiny wearing in a bikini top and black sweatpants rolled over
her hips she was coyly teasing a huge guy all in black: mesh-back cap, t-shirt
and baggie pants, Jordan’s and gold jewelry.
The ancient building has modernized stucco exterior. Inside I
slowly climbed the old twisty staircase to second. A single grey security door opens
to a large bare room. There are no periodicals on the magazine racks; there are
no posters on the wall. There is no garbage bin or recycling blue box. All
there is is painted grey. At the far end a receptionist sits behind bulletproof
glass. There are 15 numbered doors around the room. Bolted to the floor are four
sets of plastic seats facing each other. Sporadically mumbling loudspeakers deafen
our ears.
My American friend suggested I consider going to this initial
meeting with a cane. Somebody downstairs could make five bucks a shot renting wheelchairs
easily rolled from the hospital a block away. I was relieved I didn’t fake it; the
staff has already seen all manner of exaggerated malady.
All us patients sit looking at each other while trying to not
being seen. One who doesn’t care is clearly homeless and spreads all his things
across several seats defiantly. I thought of a statistic about head-injuries
and homeless and consider him the most genuine.
By the time my worker gestured from inside the pen and pointed
to room 11, I was exhausted. It the same kind of tiny room where you get your
hospital cards or where you go to be admitted for surgery, two seats on my side,
one on hers, a computer monitor between us, lots of desk space to slide forms
back and forth, all in shades of grey.
The worker and I are almost the same age, same height, brown
hair, glasses on top of our heads. She’s better dressed because even though I
don’t want to fake it I didn’t shower and my worn cotton top has a little tear
near the hem. I think she probably has a kid like I do. We quickly realize we
are allies, she passes a pen and we get down to business. She outlined timing: she’ll
try to finish my file this week and call me next. She spoke about having me
come back for the top-up check; she doesn’t like sending it in the mail, which
makes my heart soar, money? She told me the computer would back date my claim to
whenever they deemed me disabled, my heart dropped. Six weeks? I don’t want to
ask.
My life might change next week I’m trying not to think about
how. And I don’t want jinx anything by asking questions.
May 15, 2015 (revised May 19, 2015)
| 926 words
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