Dehumanize Yourself…or, Paging Dr. Mengele

The fastest way to do the former is to apply for any government program. For instance, many months ago, when I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to work again, I began the process of applying for social security disability. I truly, truly did not want to be on disability. If I was well enough to work, I wanted to work. But at the time I wanted a safety net, and I still do. Just as a backup plan.

So first came the application. Which, I soon learned, was only the pre-application, or the application to apply. Then came the telephone interview, a wrenching two-and-a-half hours (including a lunch break) where I had to identify every doctor, every test, every ache, pain and twinge I’ve had since this whole damned thing started, including exactly when the whole damned thing started. When I had the “incident.” When I last worked. When I tried again. When that failed. Why that failed. Where I worked and how much I made for the last fifteen years. Then I was asked to send a variety of backup paperwork (birth certificate, financial statements, release forms, a vial of blood, a stool sample…just kidding. They really did want my birth certificate). Then I thought I was done. I thought they’d review it all, reject me, and I’d have to decide how much it was worth to me to go through the process again.

Then came the 20-page application. Where I had to detail exactly what I did during a typical day (I made an executive decision that I didn’t need to take an accounting of the volume of bodily fluids I lost via crying or how many tissues I used), and once again, put myself through the wrenching process of repeating the whole damned lexicon of who I saw, and when, and why; where I worked for the last fifteen years, what percentage of each working day I spent sitting, standing, walking, bending, kneeling, crouching, brown-nosing, ducking out for coffee, reading blogs on the net (again, just kidding).

Now I really thought I was done.

And then I got the letter.

Inviting me to…no, that isn’t exactly the right wording..oh, yeah…commanding me to drive thirty miles to be examined by not just one but two of the finest orthopedists and psychologists New York could hire, at their expense, mainly to prove to the state that I am who I claimed to be on all that paperwork, and that I’m not faking my condition.

This happened on Tuesday afternoon.

The first medical-type-person I saw was actually human. Unfortunately this was the physician’s assistant, who was only there to take my vitals, get a few broad answers, instill in me a false sense of security, and then shuffle me off to my next activity, which was to be an x-ray of my lower back, which I don’t know the purpose of, since none of my conditions would show up on an x-ray. But whatever. It went fine. The tech treated me like an actual patient, instead of a number or a chart. Then he sent me back to the examining room where I’d started, where I left my husband and my clothes, to wait for the orthopedist.

Paging Dr. Mengele. He was a short man of underdetermined ethnic origin, and I could barely understand him. Mostly he told me to stop talking until he asked a specific question related to that part of my condition. I felt like I was on trial.

“When did you hurt your back?” he asked.

“Last February I picked up my CPU and carried it up the stairs and felt a pain. Then in March it got worse and I found out about the herniated disks. But that’s not really the big problem…see, my fibromyalgia flared up really bad and…”

“Don’t tell me about that now. Just tell me when you hurt your back.”

I sighed. “February, 2005.”

“And then what did you do,” he said.

“I went to my chiropractor,” I said.

“And then what did you do,” he said.

“And it wasn’t helping so I went to my GP.”

“And then what did you do.”

And so on.

And then the real fun started. “How far can you move your neck?”

I showed him.

“No farther than that?”

I said no.

“Is it because you physically can’t or because it hurts?”

“I can’t,” I said.

“I need to know how far you can move it before it hurts. If I don’t get all the answers on this form they will make me do it all again and then you’ll have to do this all again. So is that as far as you can move your neck?”

“Yes.”

He asked me to stand up. He asked that I walk. On my toes. On my heels.

“Do not bend your knees!” he barked. For this is the way I’ve been trained by my physical therapist to do things during evaluations, as to bring myself the least discomfort as possible.

And I straightened my knees. And it hurt.

“How far can you bend?”

I began to tell him the story about…

“No. You must show me.”

I started.

“Do not bend your knees.”

Crap. I started over. With locked knees. And it hurt. I could feel the panic rumbling around in the base of my throat.

“From side to side. How far can you bend.”

I showed him.

Then he told me to get on the examination table. Now, most people can step on that little retractable footstool on the end, sit on the table and lie back.

I can’t. Or at least not yet.

I tried to explain to him that when I get on examination tables, I put the footstool in the middle of the table, so I could sit in the center and then roll down safely.

But he didn’t have another footstool and refused to let me do it this way.

“Just go slowly,” he said, like this was supposed to help.

And I squiggled about – slowly – so I could get into the position he requested.

Then he pulled out the table extension and told me to straighten my legs.

He grabbed one and moved it in a circle. “Does this hurt your hip?”

“No,” I said, but it did later. Then he did the other one.

“Now lift your left leg.”

You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. This is one of the things – one of the top things, just after bungee-jumping, that my PT suggested I not do right now. Dead-lift my leg from flat on my back.

I tightened my abs so tight I thought I’d rupture something. I gave my lower extremity the command. I started to sweat. Forget the pain of lifting the thing. I couldn’t even get it to move.

And somehow this was more of a blow to me than any of the pain he’d caused me already.

I felt…disabled. Somehow all of the progress I’d made over the last year flew right out of my head.

And I was allowed to get off the table and sit again in my chair.

And then I started to cry. With him sitting on one side of me and my husband on the other, engrossed in Ben Franklin’s autobiography, I had to actually get up and get my own tissues, which were in a box to the doctor’s left.

“I do not mean to hurt you,” the doctor said, but this was the most insincere apology I’d ever heard. He was not even looking at me at the time. “It is just what the law requires.”

I’d almost expected him to say, “I was just following orders.”

And then he left.

And I was still crying. And my husband was just…sitting there. While I snuffled myself to a stop. While I get dressed. I had to ask him to hand me my shoes.

“Oh, come on,” he said to me in the waiting room. Where I was made to go wait for the next leg of my adventure, the interview with the psychologist. “That didn’t look so bad, what he made you do.”

I would have strangled him. Except their psychologist would probably have me committed.

The psychologist was a tall man of unidentified ethnic origin, with only a slightly better command of the English language than the orthopedist, but I was having a hard time answering his questions. I was still upset over Dr. Mengele. I told him so, but he didn’t seem too compassionate. I think he asked me to repeat a bunch of numbers backwards and forwards. I think he asked me to confirm what I’d already filled out in my many, many applications.

And then I was done.

Finally, after a long, stony silence, Husband admitted he’d just felt awkward and didn’t know what to do.

“You didn’t know what to do? What about some comfort?”

“I was just waiting for you to stop crying. You know, it really didn’t look that bad. He just made you lie down and lift your leg. What’s the big deal?”

I didn’t see the point of continuing this discussion. He’s done other nice things for me since, but I just wish I could make him understand this one.

So...meanwhile, it’s up to Albany. The disability consultant I initially saw told me that they’d probably reject me the first round, and then I could appeal.

Cripes. Who knows what they’d put me through then?

Hopefully by the time Albany gets its act together I’ll be better. I’ll be getting stronger, will be able to work a full day without collapsing, and maybe even do a few leg lifts.

Just to prove to myself I can do it.