Hello forumy friends and neighbours,
It has been a while since I posted, so much has happened in my life and I have been reeling with it all. Seems strange to say that my Total and Permanent Disability claim (via super insurance) being won and paid out would be anything but a 'problem';. The culmination of four of the hardest and toughest mental/stress years I have been through - and I have been through A LOT in my life, like all of us. So - a good payout into my Super has secured me and my partners future. All those years of worrying about how we were going to cope, pay off the house etc. I feel bad writing about this because I know and acknowledge many of us living with MI do not have the resources I have. AND - it is still my life and I have to cope within my circumstances.
Within about 5 weeks of thinking that my insurance case was all over and paid out and I could just adjust to the new reality of being 'retired' due to phsyical and psychiatric illness - I was blindsided by a call from my lawyers. I was informed that further to my TPD claim the insurers would also pay out Income Maintenence (at 75% of an everage of the last 5 years earnings - at that time I was a seniour manager and earning a motza, stressed to the max by the responsibility, but managing to do it back then). They have paid me five years back pay, need medical attendant forms for a further 2 years for a second lump sum and then ongoing a monthly 'wage' until I am 65... Mind Blown.
Now, I am so releived because it means my darling partner who has worked her butt off to support both of us no question for the past 7 years will be able to retire in two years instead of 10 years away - that alone is the biggest gift of all of this...
Then. I am left with me, trying desperately to reframe my life, current, and future - having to front up to my GP once every three months (although I really do not know how often the income manintence requirement to provide certificates actually is YET). and to have to 'revisit' month in month out or whatever timeline it is - that I am totally - irrevocably "broken".
It seems to me that even being antsy or upset about this is somewhat wierd. When I see so many people living with MI struggling to make ends meet, live in housing, etc - but, there you have it - I DO feel anxious about having to constantly 'prove' I am sick and mad.
I have made an appointment with the excellent psychologist I had eighteen sessions with over the last few years - I stopped seeing her last November, to talk about all of this and try to find an internal locus of control for it all. So have done something positive today by reaching out to her, seeing her Thursday. But right now I am feeling tossed about on stormy seas and desperately trying to get some equilibrium.
