So much paperwork, at home and at work. Forms for this, forms for that. Online forms, paper forms. All so confusing and so much to keep track of. Now imagine how much more difficult keeping track of paperwork, or following up on paperwork can be when your husband has RSD, you work full time, have a 3 year old and you were evicted from you home 3 months ago and all your stuff is packed up and you have no clue where to start locating it. If you are filing for disability or receiving disability, the paperwork intensifies. The lack of following up or following through on this paperwork is costing me and my family money. So you think it would be our top priority. It is, but our life is different and as I tell my friends when they call me to get together, my life works on “last minute”. I get more things done, see more people, last minute, than planning ahead. Because my plans will always get jacked up because of our situation. But with paperwork, you can’t work on last minute. You need to get it done. And it comes back to where do I begin looking for all the info I need to fill out this paperwork. Then I get overwhelmed, stressed and my defense mechanism of avoidance comes into play. I avoid unpleasant things, thinking I am saving myself grief. But in the end, I cause myself more grief. Vicious circle.
Then you have RSD. With Kevin’s RSD, you don’t know when he will have a good day or a bad day. So you can’t plan. When he is able to do something, you have to drop what you are doing and do something with him or you will lose that opportunity and you don’t know when you will get the opportunity again. Sometimes I don’t want to or feel like dropping what I am doing and it frustrates me when I have to and I take it out on Kevin and I don’t mean to. So in regards to all this paperwork that needs to get taken care of and which I need Kevin’s help in doing, because the VA won’t deal with the spouse only the veteran themselves, I have to catch that opportunity. But when Kevin feels good, I don’t want to waste that time doing something unpleasant I want to enjoy the time and have fun with him. So paperwork doesn’t get done. And money is delayed or lost.
I know don’t look at all of it at once, knock one thing out at a time. Well then a phone call needs to be made on something and you have to wait for a response and something else comes up. Or you can’t find or don’t have the info needed and you have to order it or call someone for it and wait again. Because of our living situation we are completely disorganized and everything takes so much more time to get even one thing knocked off. And we don’t have that luxury of time when it comes to getting money.
Kevin has enough to deal with daily without me nagging him about making these phone calls or filling out that form or calling for that information. Like I said before, if he gets a few minutes of pain relief out of hell day, I don’t want to rob him of the enjoyment of those minutes to do paperwork. It is almost like we need to hire someone or me not work to get all that needs to get done. So I am left overwhelmed with all this paperwork.
