She hopes for the best, while battling the worst

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KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Colleen Penner, who has battled bouts of depression, wants to teach music as a business.

Colleen Penner's first request was blunt:

"Please don't portray me as a whiny, self-pitying bundle of pathetic sadness 'decrying the system'," she wrote. "I really do my best to focus on all the good things in my life and on the exciting prospects the future holds."

Her second request was equally direct:

"It would be really hard on my dignity to be perceived as being in need of charity."

This is a story of mental illness, of survival, of a woman who fought back and of an employment insurance system she feels is standing between her and a better future.

So let's start with the basics.

Colleen Penner is a 35-year-old rural Manitoban with a lifelong history of crippling depression. She trained as a nurse, graduating when she was 20, and moved to Texas to pursue her career.

The depression -- and the self-doubts that accompany the illness like a cat slithering between your ankles -- began to park itself at her door in her early twenties.

She left Texas and returned to Manitoba and her family. The stress of nursing was taking a serious toll.

"I was feeling really tired, fatigued, sleeping all the time. I didn't know that wasn't normal."

In fact, she was experiencing some of the early warning signs of depression.

Nursing was all she knew. She took a part-time job near Austin, Manitoba and studied to become an intensive care nurse. She graduated at 23.

Her next job was in northern Manitoba. From there, she moved to Victoria with a half-formed plan to give up nursing and become a pilot.

"I felt maybe it was my career that was dragging me down," she says.

A new neighbour, alarmed because she hadn't seen Penner in a few days, entered her apartment. Penner was weeping, wearing the same clothes she'd been in for days. She had wrapped all the knives in her apartment in duct tape and newspaper to hamper a suicide attempt.

She was hospitalized in Victoria for 14 weeks. When she came back to Manitoba, she stayed off work for a year in order to fully recover. She collected EI medical benefits for the 14 weeks she was in hospital.

Then she was on welfare, still shaky but determined to beat her illness.

Slowly working her way back, she took a summer job as a camp nurse. She also took courses in music and interpersonal skills. Her parents helped her a lot financially and emotionally.

She moved to Winnipeg and took a job with a private home care agency. That lasted a couple of years. She filled in at personal care homes, building confidence that she could return to full-time nursing.

In 2002, she got a job with the Salvation Army crisis stabilization unit and spent two years there. That ended and she bounced from temporary nursing jobs to part-time work.

From August 2006 to the end of March 2007 Penner was back on medical leave for depression. With medication and counselling, she felt well enough to return to her profession.

She was wrong. In the fall of 2007, the black dogs started nipping at her heels. She realized nursing was no longer a viable option.

She applied for EI again. With the assistance of her MP, she received a cheque in mid-December. Her medical benefits expired Jan. 3 and she applied for regular benefits.

When Penner contacted me last week, she hadn't received a cheque since the start of January.

She was humiliated that, as a 35-year-old woman, she had to get her mother to phone the pharmacy and pay for her antidepressant medication.

Then she received notice from EI that, during the worst of her mental health crisis, she had messed up filling out forms and didn't acknowledge two cheques received from previous employers.

Penner admits the mistake, says it was her fault and wants to make amends.

She also wants to be accepted into an EI self-employment program that will help her retrain and set up a business as a piano teacher. She has clients lined up and just needs some EI funding to help her through the next months.

As it stands, she may lose her hydro, telephone and Internet on Mar. 18 because that's when her money runs out. She plans to park her 2002 Chevy Cavalier. Her tiny country house is paid off.

Her freezer is stocked with game from friends who are hunters.

"Because of my hard work in regaining my health, I am ready to get back on my feet again," she says. "I know I can make this work."

All she wants is a fresh chance.

Now, remember where we began. She doesn't want charity. She is not asking for cash donations or a pity party.

She just wants a little more help from a government program she has paid into for most of her life, despite her illness.

You tell me: Does she deserve this chance? Do we reward a woman who has desperately battled back from mental illness or do we tell her she's played the system for too long?

Which answer guarantees the better outcome?

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 18, 2009 A2