Let's face it, hospital stays are
full of unfamiliar terms and confusing procedures. From wearing a hospital gown
and settling into a small room that you may share with a stranger to
understanding your diagnosis and treatment, many patients feel overwhelmed. To
make matters worse, your confusion may continue even after you have been
discharged and sent home. Weeks pass, life returns to normal, and then one day
there it sits, waiting in the mailbox-that jumble of lines, abbreviations, and
numbers that can only mean one thing: your hospital bill.
The typical
bill can be difficult to understand, even for those in the health care
industry. This is because the act of consolidating fees for the various
services you receive while in the hospital can be challenging. Any hospital
stay will include several services from the hospital's many departments. Most
likely you will receive multiple bills from your hospital stay: one from the
hospital, one from the emergency room, and one from the lab. To add to the
confusion, your bill will likely contain an abundance of codes and
abbreviations, which vary from hospital to hospital and insurer to insurer. In
the end, your statement may look more like a foreign-language puzzle than a
bill.
It was
only a matter of minutes, although it seemed like a lifetime for the army of
cops to arrive. Moving in a surreal, time-warped world, I made a 50-cup pot of
coffee in the kitchen area of the Driver's Lounge, which was only a hundred
feet from the crime scene-Rusty's garage. Recalling Elaine Willowby's murder at
Masonville last year, I cranked up the air-conditioning and lit up the lounge.
I expected the police to use the two pool tables to catalog evidence.
Even as the siren died down from the last squad car to
arrive, the lounge had become a hubbub of activity. It was a convenient staging
area for the police and crime scene people-as well as a cool and comfortable
place for a break from the hot and muggy June night.
I was operating mainly on instinct and prior military
training after finding Rusty's corpse. Trying hard not to dwell on it, I
cleaned the kitchen sink and microwave oven, then checked the refrigerator for
decaying contents and tightened a loose hinge on the door into the men's locker
room.
I kept out of everyone's way by cleaning commodes and
urinals in the men's locker room, placing fresh bars of soap at the sinks, and
replacing rolls of toilet paper as well as paper towels in the dispensers. I had
checked the women's room, but few women used those facilities between the
weekly janitorial visits and nothing needed done.
I drew a cup of coffee to sip on and decided I needed
to check on Beau. Afterwards, I'd wander around the scene again to see what was
going on. I was about to stand up and leave when a female paramedic came out of
the women's rest room, drew a cup of coffee, and walked to the bulletin board.
She stopped to study it while she inhaled the fragrant aroma of the fresh
coffee.
She was an attractive young woman, medium height,
hourglass body, and curly auburn hair. She wore a Fire Department shirt and
cargo style pants laden with bandages, latex gloves, scissors, and other
medical paraphernalia. As I rose, she glanced at me, looked at the board, then
turned back to me again, and said, "You're Kurt Maxxon, aren't you?"
I nodded and walked over to see what prompted her
question. Posted under a banner saying "NOTEWORTHY
NEWS" was an article with a photo of me standing next to my car, Nikki, taken a month earlier, after we'd
won the Evandale race. The Headline read: Kurt
Maxxon comes from behind-wins by a bumper. Mutt Sparks, a good friend who
is the Chief Sports Reporter at The Kings Rapids Times-Democrat newspaper, had written the story. The paramedic
stripped off a purple latex glove and flung her hand out to me. "My husband's a huge fan of yours," she said. "He'll
be at the race Sunday, rooting for you."
Everything
You Need To Succeed Was Inside You Before You Were Born -- Chapter 36
This chapter, above all else, is
the one you want to read. If you cannot buy the book, read this one chapter now
to change your life forever. This concept presented here will get you more
motivated than any other concept anywhere else on the planet. If it fails in
this aspect, I weep for you. No one can help you if you do not grasp the
concept in this chapter. Not one person. If you cannot get rid of what is
holding you back, I cannot replace it with new thoughts. Look deep inside right
now.
It is at birth and before that you
are like all of the other creatures on earth. You are incapable of making
conscious decisions that crush your true potential. Take this fact to heart
right now. Not one other creature on this planet refuses to take responsibility
for not only their survival, but to be the best or biggest they can be. You
only learn to make decisions that hinder your true success as you grow.
"I hate mankind, for I think myself
one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."
Joseph
Baretti (1716-1789)
As you grasp this concept, I can
hear some of you start spouting out your little euphemisms for "higher
species". "This is what makes us superior to the other animals of the earth,
compassion, rational thought, and the desire for equality."
Let's take recent events, men with
tigers, woman with chimpanzee, all with disastrous outcomes. It came to a point
where the animal desired to be the top dog.
Trees grow as tall and big as they
can. They don't limit themselves at all. Wind breaks a branch, the tree grows
another, year of drought, next year tree drinks double.
We are the only species that limits
ourselves not only from our conscious decisions, but limits others with
pettiness, class envy, and jealousy.
I see people everyday who tear down
successful people; "He's too rich." "Get more blood from that turnip.", "Oh
fancy pants in her big house."
Jealousy, Ugly.
"Man is the only animal that
blushes. Or needs to."
Mark
Twain (1835-1910)
Instead of tearing down others,
find a way to lift yourself up. Read and learn new skills to improve your
position in a company. Find ways to save or make more so you can buy a bigger
house. Don't make someone lower so you don't feel inferior.
Don't look to others to stop
succeeding so you can be lazy.
In fact, this is the best thing I
saw in my daughter. She accepted every negative thrown her way and fought to be
the biggest and best she could be. She did everything perfectly.
She grew new branches.
Why would you look to others for
your success?
The next sentence is the cold hard
fact. Get ready, you are either going to continue to drone on in your life or
you will change forever from this one sentence. Prepare yourself, everything
will change. Once this knowledge gets out, we will know which of our species
are failures and which of our species wishes to succeed.
Here it is.
No one - not your mother, your
father, co-worker, boss, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, priest, rabbi,
policeman, fireman, postman, grandparents, store clerk, internet email,
president, government, congress, free money, bailout, loan, Nicaraguan bank
manager, lottery, book, motivational speaker, coach, sports team, or animal can
make you successful or is responsible to make you successful. Only you as an
individual.
Let's look at something else. We
actually make laws or regulations that diminish or punish or inhibit in some
way success.
Why? Does it make us feel better?
For some reason everyone is
thinking that we are all owed the same thing no matter our input amount.
Look at this example:
One guy works for 20 years, saves,
invests and betters himself through a lifetime of learning.
Another is a dropout, holds jobs
for only weeks, stops learning, saves nothing, but expects the same rewards
and lifestyle as the guy above!
This is where the argument earlier
in this chapter that we are superior because of our equality thinking ends. We
have long since passed where this argument holds water.
We cannot continue allowing the
second person to even exist. (Oh my, did he just say that!) Yes. Nothing in
nature has ever done this. If it did so, dinosaurs would all be laying around
eating only what they planted themselves, and one of them would be planting
nothing and still expect to eat.
Do you understand how ridiculous
this concept is now?
This mindset is the most
destructive concept that is plaguing our society, nigh our very existence.
I feel sorry for the second guy. He
has buried his Natural Success Principles. I wish to help him, but alas, I
cannot. No one can help if he continues with such a devastating frame of mind.
Here is the bad part, he needs to
become extinct. That thinking is not conducive to nature or to survival and
especially not success. There is no equality other than we all have the same
set of principles I have laid out in this book. Since we all have them we can
all achieve more. Some people have chosen to use them and some people have
chosen to bury them.
So let's translate, the
unemployment rate in our nation will never be zero. Want to know why?
Some people are unemployable. Got
it. Some people choose not to work.
Is it fair to give them what others
have produced? Does this not perpetuate failure? Does this not increase the
layers in which are piled upon your Natural Success Principles so that you will
not see them or use them and become dependent on someone or something, usually
government.
If you are one of these people, I
swear I want to help you break free. You can never be successful when you are
dependent on others. We need to break the addiction to your own failure.
"Just because you got the monkey
off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town."
Allow me to ask the above-mentioned skeptics whether they would hire me after learning during their search process that I was hospitalized seven times for bipolar disorder, lost numerous jobs because of agitated manic-depressive episodes, and was expelled from law school on the very day that the Dean learned that I have bipolar disorder. To those who say that I should get off my dead behind, get a job, and go to work, I say, “Hire me. I dare ya!”
I had bipolar disorder prior to the day in 1976 when I started a summer job at the paint manufacturing company where my father worked in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. I was 14.
I struggled with major depression and mania during the semesters when I worked two jobs (part-time lifeguard and full-time child care worker in a residential treatment facility for court-adjudicated kids) while taking three undergraduate courses at Duquesne University.
I lived with bipolar disorder, untreated, while I worked in a school and partial-hospital classroom with violent, inner-city teenagers.
I had bipolar disorder when I was spit on, cursed, kicked, and punched – all in the course of doing my job.
I lost social service jobs due to bipolar disorder when I got too depressed to continue or finally blew my stack – after willingly going into chaotic, disturbed, and abusive home situations that one would do anything to avoid in one’s own family. And I kept on applying for new jobs and going back to work, never giving the slightest consideration to applying for Social Security Disability Income (SSDI).
I was first hospitalized for my bipolar disorder in 1988 – for two months. Upon my discharge, I gave no consideration to applying for SSDI.
Over the next 18 years I held at least 14 different jobs with 14 different organizations. I was hospitalized six more times.
In July 1999 I was fired from a job as Director of a family counseling program. I had testified on behalf of a family who was attempting to have their children returned from the custody of the county’s Department of Children and Youth Services (CYS). CYS vehemently opposed the family. The judge agreed with my recommendation – against the wishes of CYS. The same CYS, that is, which funded our program. I was fired 11 days later.
After being fired as Program Director, rather than considering SSDI, I attempted to change fields. I went to law school at the age of 38. That‘s a drastic change of life for a man approaching middle-age. But I did it in the hope of being productive, supporting myself, and making a contribution rather than applying for disability. I wanted to work and be financially responsible.
After I was expelled from law school within one day of the Dean learning of my disorder, I went back to work as a counselor.1 I was fired from that job after confronting an ex-con father regarding his mistreatment of his autistic son. I admit that I also had trouble keeping up with the paper work. The job and the stress of trying my lawsuit was causing bipolar to mess with me. But I still did not consider SSDI.
My point in all of this is that I did not leap at the chance to leave the workforce and collect a government check. From the time I was first hospitalized in 1988, it took 18 years, 14 jobs, 6 more hospitalizations, a plethora of psychotropic medications, an expulsion from law school, and the loss of my lawsuit before I finally applied for SSDI.
If you think I should go back to work, hire me. I dare ya!
SSDI is not welfare. I paid into it nearly every hour that I worked (part-time, full-time, or summers) from 1976 until 2003. I could have applied the first time I cracked-up in 1988. But I held onto the hope of being able to work and succeed until I finally lost my lawsuit in December 2006. I could no longer beat my head against that wall. When the federal court system failed me, I decided to take the safety net that I had paid into. And I thank God that I live in a country that has the compassion to provide such a program to people who are too handicapped to remain in the workforce.
Some people will say that there surely must be some work that I can do. “He’s written a book,” they will argue, “Doesn’t that prove that he shouldn’t be on disability?”
I do not deny that there is work that I can do – when I am not too manic or depressed and if I can do it when I want to do it, the way I want to do it, and without a boss dragging over my shoulder. I never know when I will or will not be able to function. (I write because I can do it only when and if I feel like doing it. There is nobody making demands about how and when it gets done. Therefore, if I do not feel like writing, then it does not need to get done.)
Being forced to be at a specific job, for a specific 40 hours per week, doing things according to somebody else’s directions would, in short order, cause me to blow a fuse. Or, as the vocational expert at my disability hearing said, “He is incapable of interacting in a socially appropriate manner.” Bipolar can do that. There is documentation. But that does not mean that I am out of control 24 hours a day. Just that bipolar prevents me from continuously interacting in a way necessary to maintaining regular employment.
Do you know of any companies that would allow me to have as many sick days as necessary, that I could take whenever necessary, on the spur of the moment, and possibly for a month at a time?
If being on SSDI helps to keep me sane enough to stay out of the psych ward, then my benefits may actually be saving the government some money. A thirty day hospital stay could amount to as much money as I will receive on SSDI in three years – maybe more.
I am a political conservative. I believe in small government, low taxes, cutting Washington’s wasteful spending, financial responsibility, free market capitalism, the right to life, a strong national defense, and the sovereignty of the fifty individual states. But Social Security Disability is a legitimate and necessary government program. There are citizens of this country who truly cannot work due to a handicap. And once they have gone through the thorough and rigorous governmental process of determining that they are no longer medically capable of working, the government must provide a safety net.
We who receive SSDI have either paid into the program or have been severely handicapped all of our lives. We did not choose to be medically incapable of being a part of the workforce.
If bipolar disorder has caused you to be unable to work for significant periods of time or repeatedly interrupted your ability to work, I urge you to look into social security disability income. Knowing that you have a financial safety net may relieve some of the work-related stress that can sometimes exacerbate your symptoms. There is no shame in receiving SSDI and receiving it does not mean that you can never work again. In fact, once a person is awarded SSDI, he is permitted to earn a specific, though small, monthly sum of money and still receive benefits. Also, if your condition improves and you attempt to return to full-time employment, social security will continue to pay your full monthly benefits for your first nine months of work. (Scial Security Administration, January 2009, Publication No. 05-10095)
Rather than reporting to a full-time job every morning, I now spend my time writing at Ross Park Mall (Yeah, that sounds strange. Consider it bipolar); researching and reading everything that catches my interest; singing in the choir, the car; and the shower; studying the Pittsburgh Pirates; swimming; lifting weights; cross-training and climbing. I can do these things in spite of bipolar disorder because I can do them when I want to, how I want to, and without a boss scrounging over my shoulder. And I can choose not to do them whenever bipolar rears up – without the risk of getting fired or expelled. Of course, these activities and all of my life are a bit easier without the pressure of being obligated to a job while roiling with bipolar.
It was not my choice to have a handicap and applying for SSDI was a last resort after 18 years of drastically mood disordered employment. I know that I have made long, sincere, and repeated effort to gain and hold employment. For those reasons, I will receive SSDI as long as necessary, without shame. However, I hope that I will someday be able to, at least partially, support myself through writing, preaching, and private practice counseling – whenever I may be medically capable.
I won’t be able to write, preach, or counsel as a full-time, or even part-time, employee, but if I can do it on my own, whenever capable, with the freedom to not do it whenever not capable, then I have the hope of being productive. Knowing that there is a safety net if bipolar causes me to fall, I believe that it is possible for me to be productive.
Again, I thank God that I live in a country where the taxpayers are willing to compassionately support SSDI. It is a blessing.
Book Excerpts 
