I came home from work on Dec. 8, 1980, feeling sick from a flu-like virus. I was out sick for two weeks, before limping back to work for the last of the month, but never felt the same again. By May of 1981, I developed a full blown case of what later became known as CFS. I was bedridden for a solid week until the debilitating fatigue let up. Thought it might have something to do with allergies at the time, but it never went away.<\/p>\n
I later lost my job, and struggled to find some kind of work I could still do, even going to a business school for training. Afterwards, I got a job in the composition room at our daily newspaper, but lasted less than two months until I became too tired to do the job and was let go. At that point, I decided I needed to apply for Social Security Disability.<\/p>\n
First, I had to try to find out what was wrong with me physically. I had to go to a local community hospital clinic to start the tests, since I had neither money nor insurance. As there was no name for the malady at that time, Social Security kept turning me down, and I had to keep appealing my case. It took four years of testing until I was finally diagnosed with CFS, and I could get approved for disability, though my appeals went all the way to the U.S. District Court of Appeals, just short of the U.S. Supreme Court level.<\/p>\n
During this time, I had to move in with friends for a year. After that, I managed to find an apartment that was income-based, and my “income” from welfare was so low that not only did I not have to pay rent, I would go to the apartment office each month to receive utility payment assistance.<\/p>\n
Being able to finally qualify for Social Security Disability payments has been a blessing, but it took SO long to get them. I’m now going on 62, and haven’t worked since the 1980s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans of ME\/CFS I came home from work on Dec. 8, 1980, feeling sick from a flu-like virus. I was out sick for two weeks, before limping back to work for the last of the month, but never felt the same again. By May of 1981, I developed a full blown case of what later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bill.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}