My husband applied for disability in March of 2024. Between his congestive heart failure and diabetes, he is no longer able to work. Throw in depression, and he’s barely surviving. As am I.

But, tomorrow, NINE MONTHS after he applied for said disability, he will finally have the physical required by Social Security to determine if he is, in fact, eligible for disability payments. That he has paid in for. Let’s be clear about that. He has been paying into social security since he started working as a teen. But the SS Administration still has to determine if he’s sick enough–not his doctors who actually encouraged him to do this two years ago–but a family nurse practitioner the government has hired.

Do I have hope that he’ll finally be approved? Of course, but very very little. It’s almost a given that you get denied disability on the first run. My brother was denied his first time. Why? No fucking clue. His heart no longer worked. Period. But was still denied. So yeah, although there’s a smidgen of hope that Wal will get disability soon, we’re still going through this process expecting to be denied then starting the whole damn process over again.

You know, I looked at my blog post from a year ago and read how I had hoped Wal wouldn’t have to stop working that year. Little did I know that he would be unable to work just over a month after I wrote that post. I wonder what I’ll know a year from now. Will I still be selling my blood plasma? Will Wal still go to the food bank every Tuesday? Will his health be about the same or worse?

I’m almost glad I don’t have a crystal ball.

Let’s just keep chugging along, shall we? Let’s just pretend that it’ll all work out.

Or I guess we can hope, right? Sometimes I’m not sure I know the difference between hoping and pretending, but tonight….

Tonight, we’ll call it hope.

❤