Need Advice on Husband dealing with ANA

[JANE]

Hello Everyone.
This may be long so bare with me.  I am the wife to man that has ANA.
Our story starts out with my husband and I with our two daughters, 3 1/2  & 1 month old and us just buying our first home!
We'd been married for 3 years and while things weren't great by all means due to his drinking problems, they were okay. My husband was having all sorts of problems that year with hearing loss that a doctor bascily told him was due to a cold and sent him off for x-rays to make sure he didn't have pnemonia (not sure where that ever came from since he didn't have a cold to start with), then being the doctor fearing man he is he refused to go back. Next came the dizziness but with his drinking you never really noticed where it came from. But when the slurred speech started happening when he was sober is when I got concerned. My family and I thought maybe he'd had a stroke and I demanded we take him to the doc for a check.  I guess I ended up scaring him bad enough with the stories the ER nurse told me to convience him to go the ER then and there to get checked even though he was still afraid he went. So there we were in the cold December sitting in an ER room waiting for test results from a doc who took a head scan to see if he'd suffered a stroke. I had just had our second daughter less than a month before and was still healing from the c-section
and he was biting his nails afraid he'd miss work the next morning (he was a manager for a well known Doughnut store and had been for 4 years).  I was headed to the potty when the ER doc stopped me and assured me I needed to hear this news he had.  Imagine my shock when he held out the x-rays to show us a HUGE tumor growing inside my husbands head. Nearly 6 CM they said and as big as a baseball if not bigger. It needed to come out ASAP! In tears I called all family and friends while he sat and cried and tried to understand what was going on.
They set up an appt. for a week later on the very day my second daughter would turn a month old.
He went into the surgery optomistic but afraid thinking things would be better in the end, but he came out a totally differnent person. The surgery left him with facial paralysis and for the first two months he had to learn to do everything all over again.  His family wanted to have him to go a rehabilation center but he begged me to take him home and that is what I did and with only me and him and his determination to get better and go back to work asap he was walking on a cane the next day after he came home (he came home in a wheel chair unable to stand on his own might i add) and the following day he was walking alone. This was all his doing and I was so proud of him, he was a very proud man!
He went back to work EARLY from his three month leave because they called him and said they needed him. No griping, no fussing he was devoted to this place, even though i felt it was still to early he said he needed to.
WELL less than four months later they walked up to him after a morning rush and explained that they were letting go of all the asst. management positions in the area and he could leave immediatley.
Needless to say he was crushed.  I don't believe in all honesty anyone else lost their jobs that day just him.  We threatend to sue and they offered him his job back but after nasty comments about his devotion to the company (Because of threatning to sue) and how he took things to personally.
Needless to say he told them to shove it! Which I really don't blame him for.
Problem is that he hasn't been able to find ANYONE who will hire him even with all his experience, and while some may think... didn't have have a problem with drinking, not after the surgery though it now has started up again, he quite after he had his surgery and it never affected his work, he drank when he was off.
My husband is severly deppressed and has applied for job after job and no one will hire him.  He blames me on the fact that I can't afford to get him the surgery to fix his facial paralysis, but I only make $9 and hour and my job doesn't offer health insurance.  He's to the point where he shuts himself out from all of us and we are now losing our home and he feels it's his fault. I have tried to talk to him, he wont see a councelar no matter what i say, no family will help us, No one will help. He needs a job to give him his confidence back.  He has over 6 years in ASST. Management experience and 10 years in cash handling etc. I just don't know what to do.
He's tried everything and frankly I am fed up with the way people blow him off.  The surgery may have left him with a droop on the left side of his face but 98% off the time he can speak clearly and it's not a huge droop. He is still a little wobbly but not much. 
BTW he still has 25% off the tumor, most of it was attatched to the three main blood vessels in his brain so they couldn't remove it all, and he did try to get disability but they turned him down and weren't very nice to him about it either. He spoke with his tumor doctor and he's the kind that doesn't care about you if you don't have a pay check.  He actually told the disabilty people that my husbands facial paralysis should fix its self and he was over reacting, well it's been two years and it's no better.
I really don't know what to do or where to turn.
Anyone with any advice I'd appreciate it.

[Kathleen_Mc]

Jane: I think your husband needs to see his family doctor and get treatment for his depression, use the money he uses to drink on the antidepressants and then get out and look for a job, any job, this will help him improve his mood and then he can always keep looking for a job more to his liking. It is sad that employers are able to treat people with disabilities in such a way, I am sure he has all his thinking abilities intact still? Kathleen

[Rc Moser]

Your Husband IMO is disabled, Don't take no for an answer. aliens get SS and SSI that's never worked in this country a day. You husbands has rights, get a laywer. IMO they will refuse the first application. Insurance Companies do the same thing most people are too proud and just accept it. Don't be one of them, Your husband will need more medicial attention. Base this on what he can't do , the fact that he got fired , and he can't find another job for being disabled from the operation. Looks, memory loss, weakness, confussion, pain, sleep disorders, and many more, do some on research on his conditions and get him to realize he has to go to doctors to verify his conditions IMO not the ones that done the operation get other opinions and statements. Alot of them. Once your case has been verified he will get back pay to the day he got out of the hosiptal.

You will probably have to get a lawyer and fight this for a while. Get copies of all the medical records, including the misdiagonsed ones. With the tumor remaining he is not cured. A nerosurgeon should be able to verify all of his conditions. Don't let the drinking effect you decisions, Most of the of the world are social drinkers and some don't admit it. You can also blame the drinking and weight gain and about any other problem or flaw on his condition now. He is not the same as before.  Please  seek advise from social workers, doctors, lawyers, ex-workers, friends, and anybody else that can make statements about your husband condition and the way he was before is life altering operation.

Anybody that's disabled needs to give this girl advise, she needs and deserves help!

[antoinette]

Hi Jane, Among all the good advices that patients here will give you, there is one very important one, which I know does not appears so but if you are going to contact agencies and people who could help, you must prepare exactly what you are going to tell them and not stray from it. You must not be emotional, even with your lawyer, and you must not ever take no for an answer. just go back home, put all dates and new info on paper, very organized, and go back, even at the same place, it may be another person who will take care of your claim. Be very clear and brief with your descriptions. Point form is a good idea. You may have it on paper, typed and I bet you they will ask you if you can let them have that piece of paper.
Since you will have prepared it at their intention, off course, you let them have it. It will speak better than anyone can do. Ask any of us to help you prepare it even..
Too many irrelevant details can shut an interlocutor's mind .
Good luck. Your husband needs you and you need all the help you can get and should get.
antoinette

[ppearl214]

Jane,

Hi and welcome.  You're in VERY good company here. Everyone, thus far, has given you wonderful advise.  I would have said the same about hiring a labor atty and re-checking into Permenant disabilities, unless he does have the capabilities to hold a job (even if it's internet work from home).

As for you, all I can offer is a hug and try to reassure you that with time and energy, you all CAN beat the system on them trying to knock him/you all down.  You need hugs too.

Hang tough.
Phyl

[Battyp]

Jane,
  I just got applying with vocational rehab which is a federal agency that will help a disabled, displaced worker gain employment.  I haven't heard if I am approved yet and I read somewhere on the internet (wish I could remember where) that if you have gone through voc rehab and they deem you unemployeable then it's easier to get through the social security disability program.  I've been told an attn speeds up the social security disabilty program but haven't dealt with any of that.  I do know document, document, document and keep knocking on doors.  I'm the sole provider to a teenager who's dad died 10 years ago so I'm struggling to hang on and getting problems from my company too.  My doctor heard my story and said there are laws and the companies can't shut us out so keep fighting and get the doctor to write a letter on your husbands condition.  Can he go out on disabilty with his current job?  Or do partial disability?  If so they can't do what they did.  Also, get the doctor to state he's handicapped.  Makes a big difference in your rights.  What a tough road you have been on.  Please know my prayers are with your family,

Michelle

[Yorkiemom]

I work for a Congressman.  We help people everyday sludge through Social Security and Disability problems.  Whatever you do, keep appealing all decisions from social security.  Find another doctor if that one won't cooperate.  After you appeal through the social security office, take copies of all your papers and contact your congressman's office and ask them to help you.  Good luck.

Yorkiemom