I hope that it works out for you. Please feel free to post here whether it does or not, because the information could help others who are in your position.
Also, know that people on this forum are here to be supportive and, if we can be, helpful.
I agree that the systems here, the health care system, the VA system, the Social Security system, are all so deeply flawed that they are dysfunctional for thousands of people, and this is a real shame.
Social Security was never designed or intended to be something for people to live on in the first place. But the fact is that the way things are, and increasingly becoming more so, it has become virtually impossible for the ordinary person in the working class to get enough money ahead to have investments to live on in retirement, and pensions (if a person is fortunate enough even to have one) have a nasty habit of disappearing. So we have hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to live on SS. People who worked hard their whole lives and now are in poverty, and for most of them it's through no fault of their own.
I sure don't know what the solution would be other than revamping the entire system, which isn't likely to happen.