Disability fraud is a myth.

The idea that Just Anybody can apply for disability and then coast along through life without anything actually wrong with them is absurd. There may be the occasional outlier, but for the most part, the hoops that one must jump through in order to even be CONSIDERED for disability are ridiculous.

My initial application was rejected out of hand. Fine. I’m told that happens, to weed out the would-be fakers. Apply again. Show them you’re serious. I apply a second time. I get rejected a second time. I become very discouraged. This process is taking a long time, my AVM is noticeably growing. I am considering charging it rent for the amount of space it is appropriating.

By the time of my second rejection I was having daily bleeds. Bad bleeds. I recall a specific incident where I sneezed and began bleeding with force reminiscent of brand new high-water-pressure plumbing. I was instantly dizzy. I genuinely thought it was the end, and I sat there bleeding all over myself and wondering, what do I do? Call 911? Should I make a Facebook post?

Obviously the bleeding did stop and all I could think about was how ridiculous it was that I was in that situation at all, laying on my bedroom floor thinking that I had just nearly died via epistaxis. I remember thinking about how Attila the Hun died of a nosebleed, he drowned in his own blood on his wedding night. Fun facts!

I decided to go through with the appeal process. I was advised to get a lawyer for this, but decided not to, due wholly to my anxiety and inability to communicate effectively over the phone.

I collected testimony from doctors and nurses who knew me and my case. I collected CDs of scans, printed out information about AVMs and the near-inevitable fatality of untreated extremity AVMs.

Then I went to court.

This was one of the harder days of my life. I was a mess of anxiety and nerves, everything seemed to hinge on that meeting. I needed to convince the judge that I deserved medical care. That I deserved a chance to get better. That I was in near-constant unmanaged pain and I was not capable of getting and maintaining a job.

I had, at some point – I think when I was 18 – taken some sort of IQ/cognitive function test with a psychiatrist who spent a grand total of 30 minutes with me asking me seemingly random ‘stuff you learn in high school’ questions. He told the judge that I ranked having below-average intelligence, and I remember being so angry. How could he claim that about me, when he’d only spent 30 minutes with me, in a stressful situation?

Already feeling lower than low, I had to state my case. I answered the judge’s questions, gave her the letters written from my doctors and nurses, explained my illness. I remember saying that I have terrible nosebleeds and she asked me if I had proof. I was baffled. No, I had not thought to take pictures while trying to stop my face from bleeding.

I went home. I made myself dinner. I spilled my dinner. I cried a lot.

A month later, I received a packet in the mail stating that I’d been approved for disability and my insurance was effective immediately. I cried again.