I went down to the Crossroads though no deals have I made with the Devil

Ed’s note: Okay. Because of age and cultural and perhaps even nationality differences, some people may be clueless about my reference to the “Crossroads” and the “Devil.“ Here is hoping that this clears this all up. I love, of course, Eric Clapton and the old Cream version of “Crossroads.” These old geezers even do justice to the song.

Today I feel as if I stand at one of life’s crossroads. A quick explainer: I suffer from chronic pain. Originally, it was from degenerative arthritis in my spine. Medication controls that pain to a certain extent. In the last couple of years I developed pain first in my feet from diabetic neuropathy and later in my lower back and hip from something I have never really had any great explanation as to the problem from my VA doctors. The pain may stem from an inflammation of a spinal membrane, the arachnoid, or from some structural defect. Either way, the VA now tells me there is nothing I can really do for it. I mean, I could take a gamble on their pain clinic, but I could wind up with even worse problems. It’s, as they say on Facebook, complicated.

So, I seem to see nothing ahead but a life of pain, but somehow, that doesn’t seem to bother me as much as what about my making a living? It has become increasingly difficult to do my part-time job which pays a salary some full-time people would like to see. Part of that part-time job includes what amounts to selling my program to others so they will cooperate, although those in my job aren’t trained adequately as salesmen because of the complexities involved in the data collection at the heart of my job. It isn’t easy to sell things anyway, unless you are one of those with “the gift.” But it is difficult for me in particular because I long worked as a journalist, as a listener who interprets what I carefully try to hear. It is hard enough to stand on my feet for more than 10 minutes because of excruciating lower back and sometimes feet pain. But combine all of that with trying to be pleasant when you are feeling godawful.

My situation is much more complex than that, but in a nutshell … So the time has come to at least consider filing for disability, both with Social Security and a disability retirement in my job. The most difficult point to ponder is, can I survive on what I make both with retirement and SS Disability? Can I even qualify for SS Disability? I am pretty certain I can, with some difficulty, obtain a medical retirement. Then I have to find out that, should I qualify for one or both disability situations, how much am I allowed to make in my original profession as a writer and journalist?

I am not sure what it says when you worry more about how you are going to survive financially than how are you going to survive with chronic, severe pain — a disability of which some people often doubts its existence. My friends and family pretty much seem supportive. Yet, I know how it is for others who have no idea what chronic pain really is all about. I grew up in a culture that sometimes looked down on those who filed for worker’s comp or disability. This was due to the lazy folks who would prefer to get money for nothing. And later as Dire Straits’ guitar whiz Mark Knopfler sang in the 80s, “your chicks for free.” I’ve been accused of being lazy. I was even elected laziest in my school, an odd family tradition as two of my brothers also won that title.

Nonetheless, I can assure you that if I could go out each day and walk for at least an hour as I could do before my latest bouts with pain now going on about two years, I would have no problem going out every day or every couple of days to do my job collecting data. The trouble is, I have tired of trying to work in agony. I still want to work and I can still work as my feet are the only problem I have in sitting down and typing or talking on the phone. People cannot see you grimace on the phone unless you make terrible sounds or else you talk via some visual method such as Skype on the Internet.

It is thus that at the crossroads — and not my favorite college bar during the 70s and 80s for they paved it over like “paradise” in Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi” and “put up a parking lot.” — that I sit and ponder the future. The old “double nickel” seems too young to think of the “D” word. Still, something has to lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.