Where is a disabled person in Canada supposed to go for financial help?
At the age of 5 I went to the hospital for a “routine” operation. I was there to have my tonsils removed. Unfortunately for me the Dr. I had turned out to be a hack. While putting stitches in my throat he messed up and the stitching needle punctured my Carotid Artery (One of the main arteries’ in the human body.)
Unbeknownst to me or my family, I was sent home. While at home and over the course of a week the artery in my neck slowly seeped blood down my throat and into my stomach. I woke up at 5 in the morning and ran to the bathroom where to mine and my mother’s horror I began throwing up the blood that had pooled in my stomach.
Wrapped in a strawberry shortcake blanket my mother rushed me to Sick Kids hospital in Toronto, Ontario. As the Doctor came into my hospital room I continued vomiting blood. The blood was coming out faster than anyone could believe. Even the blood that the doctor’s tried giving me came up. In the end I lost over three quarters of my blood that is supposed to be in my young body.
As the doctor’s worked feverishly hard to pump blood back into my tiny little body, I suffered a mild heart attack and a major stroke. Also during that time the doctors lost my heart beat and I was officially proven to be clinically dead for 31 minutes. When the doctors brought me back I quickly fell into a coma where I remained for nearly 2 weeks.
During that time my mother was told that I would never wake up I would be on some kind of life support for the remainder of my life.
To all their astonishment I did wake up and very quickly began doing all those things the doctor said I would never be able to accomplish on my own, things like eating speaking and even walking. During my stay at the hospital I surpassed every body’s prediction of just how much I would be able to do on my own.
Upon release from Sick Kids hospital I entered a rehabilitation center where I resided for approximately a week before finally being able to go home. At home the rehab didn’t stop. Three times a week my mother drove me to Erinoak where I saw a physical therapist and a child psychologist. Being a disabled kid in school was well, let’s just say was not a very fun place.
Due to the doctor’s incompetence I was able to sue for malpractice. The trail began then the long wait to hear the judge’s verdict. At the same time that I was going through this ordeal I met another girl who was about my age and she too was suing for malpractice. In her case she had broken her wrist, in order to put the cast on and set her wrist properly the doctor had to break her thumb. Because of the way her thumb had been broken when the cast was removed she was unable to move her thumb at all, for this inconvenience when all was said and done in her case she was awarded 1.2 million dollar’s.
In my case I completely unable to use my left hand and all and my arm seemed to have a mind all of its own of its own. In school my left arm would stiffen and go straight up in the air, it was nearly impossible to make the muscle spasms stop. I walk with a promadant limp and dressing myself was nearly impossible. For all my pain and suffering I was awarded against two hundred thousand dollars from the doctor. In 1984 when all this happened to me, my mother (a single mother of two) was denied being able to claim child disability benefits for the simple reason that I was not on a special diet.
As my eighteenth birthday approached I grew more and more excited I dreamt of all the money I was coming into and began making plans. I was told that with interest and stuff that by the time I was of age to receive the money it would have grown to well over five hundred thousand. That of course was not the case. When I picked my cheque up from the court house I was disheartened to see that it was only a little over three hundred thousand instead of the five I was told would be there.
At the age of eighteen when all my friends were out having fun I was in meetings with a financial advisor. I was advised that my best bet would be to put the money away in an annuity. I did as advised and put most of my money away into an account that would pay me $1149.51 each month for the rest of my life. At eighteen I thought I was set. In fact the only money I did spend on myself was to buy a car, a bunch of C.D’s and my dream a drum kit.
When I was 21 years old I had my first child, a boy and a year later I had my daughter. Due to my disability and the fact that I can’t use my left arm very well, looking after the children by myself was nearly impossible and for that reason my husband was unable to work. He had to help me look after our children.
In 2004 I went to community services here in Nova Scotia, at that time I was told that if I received $200 less a month that disability benefits would give me $900, a nanny to help me look after the kids, and gas money so that my husband could go out and find a job, but because I got that extra $200 I didn’t need any help from anyone, and didn’t receive help.
For years we struggled to get by just long enough until both children were in school, at that time my husband went out and rather quickly found a job and financially things began looking better. After working steady for nearly four years with a back that he broke as a kid, the doctor made him stop working when his arms kept going dead on him. It’s very hard to cut on a large table saw when you can’t trust your body to work properly. And because of his bad back working in an office is out of the question, it hurts to sit for long periods of time, even harder for him to stay on his feet for hours on end. Having no alternative Tim had no choice but to stop work. Right away he filled for CPP (Canada Pension Plan) and began unemployment sick benefits. For the past summer we scraped by making do with what we had. At the end of September sick benefits ran out. Now because he was forced to leave work and filled out the paper work for CPP we aren’t receiving any money from his end. It’ll be December or January before we find out if he is even accepted for the CPP disability benefit.
This is how sick our country is, if Tim would have just went to unemployment and not applied for CPP he would still be receiving a cheque from our government, but because he is sick and unable to work sick benefits run out after only 15 weeks, while regular unemployment runs for 52 weeks.
In the beginning of September my younger brother came to live with me. At home in Ontario he was always getting into trouble, so bad that his mother had to place him first in a government run disciplinary school that my mother found out from CAS (Children’s aid society). In order to help him and do what she thought was right my mother moved away from Toronto where my brother was a ward of the state and moved back to his small town of Tilbury Ontario. My mother thought he would do better in a small town, unfortunately her plan didn’t quite turn out and Cody was right back into causing trouble and became verbally and physically abusive towards her. Feeling desperate and not knowing what or how to handle the situation and after four years of working side by side with C.A.S. my mother put him on a plane and sent him to me in Nova Scotia.
Once he got here the C.A.S worker in Tilbury told me that C.A.S. in Nova Scotia would help us financially with raising a third kid. We were told that C.A.S. would help us to buy materials needed to finish a room in the basement so that he would have his own space, they told us they would help us get him a counselor and said they would help with whatever money he might need for school and even help with gas to get him back and forth from games and practices. After many weeks of calling the C.A.S of Ontario finally sent my brother’s fill to C.A.S. of Nova Scotia where I was informed just yesterday that Cody has never been involved with C.A.S in Ontario therefore they couldn’t do anything to help us. My brother spent three years in a group home and my mother never received the child benefit for him because he was in the care of Ontario. How does that make sense?
Out of desperation and the need for cash I called community services hoping that I would qualify for disability benefits, but to my surprise the province of Nova Scotia doesn’t have disability benefits. I was told that I needed to apply for income assistance (welfare), not wanting to but with no other option of to community services I went. As it turns out I am $33 over their budget so they can’t help me. Now my husband and I are forced to take less and less of the medication needed to keep muscle spasms at bay, we can’t afford to take what is prescribed. After many phone calls and sleepless nights I was able to get a little bit of hope. Community services came back and said that they MIGHT be able to help out with the cost of our medications but first we need to do a whole lot of running around so now I am working on getting those papers ready.
Last week a social worker came and visited the house and we told her our financial situation she was shocked. She said that we were being ripped off by all branches of our great government. I should be receiving $205 each month because I am disabled, but I haven’t received a red cent from this great land of ours. A very good friend of mine who became disabled in her mid twenties gets over $700 each month and her husband has a great job working for the government.
So there it is this is our struggle and I am sure there are more of you out there I am positive that its stuff like this that has gotten the entire world to protest.
On another note I have also been involved with a group called The National Benefit Authority. They are a group of individuals that work hard to get money for the disabled that the government owes them. According to their records the Canadian government owes me over thirty thousand dollars, but the only way I am able to get it is if I have a taxable income of twenty thousand dollars or more. I don’t even make $15,000 a year.
SO I ASK WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE THE DISABLED AND POOR IN THIS WORLD SUPPOSED TO GO FOR HELP?
