My Husband and I Need Advice/Help

Introduction I was an accountant in my previous life (before 6 years studying meteorology and then a 20-year career in it), so you’d think I would have planned this out better. I had a decent salary for much of my meteorology career, and had a good retirement plan, including an employer match of up to 10% of my salary. However, my depression (and maybe some neurological/brain issues) got the better of me, and I had to retire 2 1/2 years before I intended to, right before the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020. So we had that to deal with, a $35K loss of income (went on Social Security/Medicare and started to take retirement income from my 401(k)). My husband stepped up and got a great job to almost make up the difference, even while starting dialysis at the same time. That brings us to now. I’m a gay man who has been with the same guy (Ken) for 25+ years. We tied the knot as soon as Maryland voters approved same-sex marriage in 2013. Now, it’s 2025, and a different time. But politics is only a small part of what we are concerned about right now, and our concerns go even beyond my husband’s (Ken) End-Stage-Kidney-Disease (ESKD). Three months ago, he developed a hearing problem as a side effect from necessary and extended antibiotics use. We seem to have the hearing loss under control now, fortunately. However, he now is suddenly losing his sight. This started with his right eye a couple of weeks ago, and now his left eye is also giving him similar problems. Unlike the hearing, there is no known cause for this loss of eyesight. Another thing … it’s next to impossible to get timely appointments with any specialists these days, even with something I would consider an emergency! Until now, he’s persevered working full-time with a good salary, but he just can’t cope with all the physical issues he’s experiencing now. He likely will have to go out on SSDI which, beside being very difficult to apply for, is a pittance. We will lose about $65K in income, and we still have a mortgage. He has some money put away for retirement, but that wasn’t going to be touched for about 7 more years! What Are We Looking For? ADVICE! Our main concerns are: How do we navigate applying for SSDI, especially with the current regime? Are these places that take your house “as is”, legit? Hopefully we won’t have to go that route, but I’m currently not even close to being sure. It feels like a million questions that I have, and I’m at my wits’ end regarding being supportive of him and us. The one thing I know is that I have to take care of myself to be able to take care of him. That’s no easy feat with my depression default setting :-/. That’s about it for now and, as you might imagine, the current state of the U.S. is not helping at all.