“Most importantly, let us know how we can help you…we're DAS and we are at your service.“

-- Brenda L Sisco, Commissioner

State of Connecticut Department of Administrative Services

Ladies and Gentlemen:

To begin: I've been asking for questions to be answered; I have not been, nor am I, asking anyone to bend or break rules. I'm never sure if I'm asking for anything to which I am entitled, because no one has been able to answer, completely, the entitlement dates and rules.

I'm pleading with you to please read what I have to say. It shouldn't take long; it only took me 22 minutes to type.

[I took 22 minutes to type this email, although I haven't covered everything, because that's how many minutes were wasted on my cell phone, listening to the definition of “spend-down,” which I'd already said I understood. I was trying to get one question answered. This email, therefore, covers everything I could have asked if my time - and the State's - hadn't been wasted. However, you can also note that I've been writing this in my head for three days.]

the state's program is based on salary and not how sick one is, so i figured i'd be denied. this was the guy - the commissioner - who put his head in his hands and said to the worker assigned to me, "isn't there something we can do for this poor girl?"

social security isn't accepting "fibromyalgia" as a reason that i can't work. there was also a comment that my mental health is fine, which must have come from my former psychiatrist. (didn't she pay attention to anything i said??)

i've got a call in to an attorney whose name i got in the waiting room at the pain center. the patient to whom i spoke claims that she never loses. i left that on the voicemail.

i'm miserable. i'm feeling - even as i sit here, at my desk, with pains in my right knee (which almost never hurts anymore), the joints in my fingers, my neck, my lower back, that i've managed to lie to myself and to my doctors, that i'm one hell of an actress. i forgot, over the weekend of sulking, how much i used to enjoy writing, how i used to post daily, how i'd managed, without advertising, to make Modified News popular enough to pay for itself, though not for any of its other expenses, and how the mere act of moving my laptop from its resting place into my lap is... too much trouble because it's too heavy. (it hurts my hands to hold a paperback open.) i'd forgotten how much i used to love to drive, and how now i don't want to go farther than the doctors' or the supermarket. this is what the Government is telling me - that i'm a faker - and i'm supposed to believe it. (i'd even forgotten how much i distrust the government, these days!) thanks a lot.

what really galls me is that if i'd been irresponsible, if i'd gotten knocked up while unmarried, i could have gotten State with no questions. if 'd stopped working and had lied to my doctors, just a little bit, had just laid it on a little thick, i could have been written out of work permanently instead of trying to get in a few more years before my condition deteriorates. (i have a LOT of friends with fibromyalgia, and with worse problems. while i'm healthier than they are, now, i can honestly feel myself deteriorating, and doubt that i've got ten years left in the work force.)

i'm really pissed that they're making me feel this way. i'm also pissed that my pain is rubbing off on my mom. it WILL pass, and i'll be more cheerful and won't drag down my mom anymore, i hope.

sigh. i'm at work. my boss is out and, with the exception of some phone calls, my work is done. i guess i'll use this opportunity to clean out my gmail inbox. if i owe you an email, i'm sorry; it got out of control when my dad was sick last summer and i haven't been able to catch up. and there are more every day... (there are over 300 emails that seem to NOT be spam...)

(there is a cat on my car! it is trying to get in via the open sunroof. i'm glad i didn't open it in moon-roof mode...)

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