Massive budget cuts and hiring freezes in the last few years have turned the Social Security Administration into one of the most understaffed and overburdened agencies in the federal government. As of June, it had a backlog of more than 1 million unresolved disability claims, the highest in the agency’s history. The average wait time to get one of these claims adjudicated is more than a year.

I had been directed to this office by a social worker, a truly compassionate woman who spent many hours trying to help me. But I didn’t fully understand what program or service I was meant to apply for. She first explained it to me during the worst week of my life, while I was still wearing a hospital gown and probably half high on pain meds. It had something to do with getting Medicaid, which my husband and I could use as secondary insurance to pay off the $5,000 we still owe. That’s a tiny remnant of the $700,000 hospital bill our primary insurance thankfully paid most of. Still, there was that $5,000 bill.

I was told that our Medicaid could be secured by first applying for Supplemental Security Income—cash assistance normally reserved for elderly and disabled people with very low incomes. But whenever I got in front of a Social Security employee, no one had heard of the “Low Birth Weight Baby Program” the hospital social worker had described.

“Why are you here?” the staffer would ask. I didn’t know where to start. With the freaky blood clot that started this whole thing? With our enormous hospital bill? With the fact that I had physically appeared at the Social Security Administration four times in the last two months, waiting in line for hours to talk to a human being?

I felt frustrated, defeated, and utterly incompetent. I was developing affection for the hold music on the SSA’s 1-800 number, a lifeless melody with no beginning and no end. And my 12-week maternity leave, which I finally began to use nearly three months after my daughter was born, was starting to run out.

* * *

Now it’s a Tuesday morning, and I’m on the phone with another government administrator, trying to figure out what has happened to my life. I’m talking to someone from an office called Disability Determination Services, this time about the fact that my daughter has been deemed technically “disabled” for the 10 weeks she has been in the hospital. Sorting out who runs what has been another source of confusion. I’d previously been visiting the offices of the Social Security Administration, a federal agency, but my daughter’s medical eligibility for disability benefits was being decided at this state-level office.

“What did you send to the Social Security Administration?” I ask him, hoping this official piece of paper can help. “Can you send that to me?” He pauses, and I am pretty sure I hear him sigh. “The only thing we do is make decisions. The only people we deal with is the local office. We do not send letters out.” Why not, I ask? Another pause. “We have no connection with the outside world.”