61 Year Old Mother Seeks Grant Money For Self And Son

by Rebecca Hamel
(Truth or Consequences, NM, USA)

I am a 61-year-old woman. At the age of 43 I was diagnosed by a neurosurgeon with Severe ADVANCED Degenerative Disc Disease in my cervical spine and have been unable to work since then due to chronic pain.

I also suffer from severe depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. Medications help some but just make me sleepy and I cry a lot.

My 29-year-old son is my sole support except for $200 a month in food stamps. He just lost his job of 7 years as a CNA in a local nursing home and we live in a small town in NM where jobs are hard to find.

I have applied for SSI but have been rejected because I am unable to travel 100 miles from home for doctor appointments due to lack of reliable transportation and the physical pain such a trip would cause me.

I also have severe anxiety traveling very far from home but they just do not understand this. If were to ever get SSI my son could be paid as my full time caregiver since he is a licensed CNA but it will probably never happen due to our circumstances.

Our landlady is a "business woman" and I don't know how long she will tolerate us not being able to pay our $375 rent before she evicts us out on the hot dusty streets here in a town with no homeless shelters and no resources for people in our circumstances.

Right now my '79 Mercury Cougar isn't even running and will probably cost us about $600 to get it fixed, which we don't have at all, not even the $50 it would cost just to have it towed to a mechanic.

I feel so hopeless, that I just can't go on and even have considered just ending my miserable life but I just can't do that to my son. I'm sitting here crying as I type this. Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated.