Up until last December, I had worked for over 10 years in disability benefits compliance.

My job was, essentially, periodically checking on people around our region who were receiving state disability benefits

to make sure they were being honest about the disability.

They were complying with medical recommendations to mitigate or treat the disability and that there were no irregularities with regards to their care or the benefits they received.

Usually the in-house visits were fairly short.

Most of the real information was coming from forms

filled out by their treating doctors and a review of their current medical records as

you can't reply on self-reporting when it comes to these things. Still occasionally you would find

someone who needed more help than they were getting or that you could prove

was being dishonest just to get free money. It wasn't exactly a fun job, but I at least felt like I was performing a necessary,

if boring, bureaucratic task. In the past few years, we've started having to assess cases where the disability claim doesn't fall into the traditional categories of physical or mental issues that we've had since I've started the job over a decade ago.

Rather, the qualifying mental disability category has to be expanded to

include moderate to severe mood disorders and severe phobias if verified by

psychologist or psychiatrist.

I'm not the final say and whether these people are truly disabled or not.

But when I hear that the biggest problem they have is that they won't go outside, I admit to being skeptical.

My last visit in October, Jerry Rhodes, had that very problem.

They called it agoraphobia, and I know there's more nuance to it than what I'm saying, but it boiled

down to the fact that, except under very rare circumstances such as a medical emergency, Mr Rhodes had not left his home in five years.

I was surprised when I first met him.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't the friendly outgoing man who greeted

me at the front door and brought me into a clean and cozy living room.

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