by Julie Cazzin, for Money Sense
Ten years ago, Janet Freedman was rushing out the door of her home for work. Her arms loaded with tax returns, she missed a step on the stairs on her front porch and fell, hitting her head on the concrete. When her neighbours found her, she was barely conscious, with her head trapped between her own front steps and those of the house next door.
Paralyzed, with a partially severed spinal cord, it took more than six months of hospitalization and two years of intensive physiotherapy for Freedman to resume her life. She was unable to work and had no one to support her. “Thank goodness I had a good private disability insurance plan,” says Freedman, a certified financial planner and author of Hit by an Iceberg: Coping with Disability in Mid-Career. “Those payments allowed me to concentrate on my rehabilitation and to live my life without worrying about where the money was coming from for daily living expenses. That made a big difference to me and my recovery.”