My Ex is hoping I have a heart attack before I can get the divorce settlement

Two years ago I thought I had the flu. For five days I had a 104 fever and felt horrible. On that fifth day I woke up and my right knee was swollen, my left shoulder was yellow and swollen. I knew I was in trouble. I barely made it to the hospital... actually I didn't make it inside. i parked. made it to the elevator in the parking garage and took two steps out and collapsed on concrete. People walked around me but did nothing. A voice asked if I needed help and hands turned me over. This guy was massive, long blonde hair, a jacket that said Hoag Security. I briefly wondered when Thor started working at Hoag hospital. He put me on a bench, got a wheelchair and took me in. Turned out I had sepsis and Endocarditis. They gave me a 20% chance to beat it. Four surgeries and months of antibiotics and I did.

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I was discharged, and during my time in the hospital realized life is too short, my wife and I hated each other, so I went to an Airbnb. She had divorce papers served almost immediately. The economy took a hit around then and I was laid off. I'm an infrastructure engineer. At 56, finding work turned out to be impossible. That's when I had the first of three heart attacks. Turned out I really hadn't beaten the endocarditis. My heart was so damaged, that two years later, I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and stiff heart syndrome. Without a transplant, I'm looking at maybe five more years.

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I stayed with my elderly aunt, trying to help her out while she gave me a place to stay, but she's bipolar and tried to kill me while I was sleeping. So I went to my 89 year old mother's house, where my meth addicted oldest brother has stayed like a blight for 32 years. He hates me, as I hate him. Last July he assaulted me, and my mother chose to let him stay. I ended up homeless, living in my car in a Walmart parking lot. And here's my chief complaint: through all this I've tried to keep my head up, because I have three children, and I intend to be there somehow for them, but at every step of the way, the bureaucracy that oversees SSDI is move numbingly slow. They deny 68% of initial claims. I won't know if I'm approved until DECEMBER. And that's with a care designated Dire Need. My ex wife has stymied the division of our assets this entire time, resetting the split of retirement accounts totaling $100,000 for me. She just managed to reset it again, and the process takes 9 months to complete. She is hoping I have a massive cardiac event and she never has to give it to me. I know because she said it out loud, to me.

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We designed the system to weed out people who are gaming it, and in doing so made it where people who are literally in life or death situations, well, they are dying before they get the help they need. I'm not asking for a handout. I paid into the system my whole life. I don't want to be found one day in a tomb that's an MDX in the corner of Walmart. My one remaining friend, who has saved me more times than anyone should ever have to save someone, told me to start a Go Fund Me. I asked him who the hell is going to give anyone money with how messed up everything is right now? That's never been me. The chronic stress is taking its toll. I don't think I'm a victim. Everything that's happened, I made my own choices and many were not the best. I blame no one, except maybe my ex wife. I really needed to get that all off my chest. i try to stay positive, to do the right thing these days. I intend to go out as the man I always wanted to be. But when my ex reset the divorce settlement this week (and I was 5 weeks away from the money), it crushed me. Thanks for reading this if you made it this far. I promise, I have no intention of giving up. I really needed to vent and I'm not allowed to drink anymore... Be kind to everyone, you never know how much the other person might need it.