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disability requirements

22 years ago

I am 48 years old diabetic, hearing impaired, have high blood pressure and have had 2 mini strokes. I wonder if I can apply for ssi disability. When I look it up on the internet I just get alot of attorneys. I would like to quit work but financially I would need some assistance. Any body know what qualifies you to apply?

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Comments (6)

PeaBee4
22 years ago
Check out the Social Security Web site. It will give you the information as to what you need.

Here is a link that might be useful: Social Security Disability Information
gandbb
22 years ago
Take the advice above. It is a lot of information to wade through, but worth doing. I worked last summer for SSA. The standard is this: Do you have a condition that will last for more than 12 months - and clearly you do and are you able to participate in a "substantial gainful activity". Substantial is not defined as much. You will have to show that you can't work. You will need supporting documentation from your doctor. It would help a lot if your current employer would say that you were unable to adequately perform your duties due to your condition. You cannot apply for this while you are still working. You would have to quit. The back-log of cases is substantial so it would be months before you see a check. You can get paid back for some (not all) of that time, but supposing you quit, wait, and then don't qualify. Could you withstand that financial blow? You will be asked to fill out a form documenting your daily activities. Can you go shopping for food? Can you cook your own meals? Can you do a reasonable job of cleaning your house. If the answer to those questions is yes, then I think you will have a really hard time making a case. An agressive lawyer might work around that - but that's going to cost you too. SSI benefits aren't that high. I would expect you to pay up to a year of your benefits to an attorney. Maybe you can find one who will work for less. You might try going to your local unemployment office for free advice and assistance, but I don't know if they will spend time with you while you are still employed. I know this isn't what you wanted to hear. If SSI were easy, we would all do it. I am not working due to a pretty severe case of fibromyalgia. Lucky for me, my husband is able to support us both. I wouldn't apply for SSI because the answer to the questions about my lifestyle clearly show that I can keep myself and my house clean and functioning.
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Greetings Marcia Banner, I am sorry to hear of the problems that you and your husband are struggling with. As a Canadian I have little practical advice to offer with regard to what steps that you may take to gain support, alleviate your income problem, find lower cost supply of needed drugs, etc. Make sure that your municipal, state and federal representatives become fully aware of your immediate and drastic need. Be polite, make a good solid case for your need for support, etc. Leave them some paper detailing your problem. Be there frequently - don't let them forget you. Be persistent. Are there family, friends, etc. who can go to bat for you, as well? Community, social, church/faith groups, etc.? The more fuss by the more people, the more you're liable to get a hearing - and get something done. Especially if you can enlist some people with a high profile to support your need. If a wheel squeaks enough - and enough people get upset by the squawking - sometimes some grease can be found to quieten it down. Usually you need to become - increasingly over a period of time and without being abusive - something of a substantial pain in the butt. Do you know whether there are groups in your area helping people in similar situation, self-help groups, etc.? Go out looking for them. If there aren't such, can you, or people that you relate to (children, retired parents, faith/church, social, community groups, etc.) help gather such people into groups and, by their support and encouragement, help them become empowered? Handicapped and disabled persons often have become somewhat invisible in our society. Often it helps if some of the media can find your story interesting enough to publicize it. Memo to all: To have Marcia's husband and her to be informed that their regular disability benefit was to be cut off, effective immediately, is terrible and unconscionable. Unworthy of a wealthy economic system and a society that calls itself civilized. Primitive peoples take care of their disadvantaged better than that. After the Enron and WorldCom debacles, I wrote on "Money Saving Tips" making suggestions about lessons that individual working people could take from those dreadful experiences. They were: 1. If you are in a plan where your company encourages you, even subsidizes, your purchase of company stock, it is likely wise to sell some of it later and diversify into other investment vehicles. Many employees of those companies believed their employer to be in good shape - right till the end. 2. Join with other employees to demand that your company pension plan be carried by an outside carrier. The Enron, WorldCom and other companies' employees undergoing such problems found that the company had drained the pension plan, so that their pension credits had evaporated. So: not only did they have no job. A substantial portion of their investments were worthless. And - they had no pension to look forward to on retirement. Their fault? Not at all - except in being unwise enough not to diversify their investments while they had the opportunity. Here we have another lesson to learn, as individual employees. It is important to pressure your employer to have your disability system carried by an outside agency - so that it carries on if your employer does not. It should be funded ahead by the employer so that there would be a pool of capital set up in the hands of the company that paid benefits to enable a benefit to be carried on for a substantial period, even if their former employer disappears. Depending on the amount in the fund and the number of beneficiaries at the time that the employer ceased to fund the plan, people on disability at that time would continue to receive a benefit, at least for a time. Much more humane than the current system that they suffer under. Unfortunately - many employers are regressing. Quite a few who used to have a pension plan have dropped it, or made part-time and new employees, ineligible, etc. It becomes much more difficult to try to get an employer to make such changes unless the workers have the security of a unionized workplace - otherwise, such stirrers-up-of-trouble usually find themselves without a job rather quickly. My best wishes to you and to your husband, Marcia. (just now somewhat less than usually) joyful guy/Ed
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joann23456
22 years ago
My sister applied for SSDI by herself, and her application was granted within two months. She has serious mental health issues which are well-documented, so the parts about taking care of yourself weren't crucial. She definitely can't work.

She gets only $500-600 per month, definitely not enough to live without extra money or family help.

Good luck.
gandbb
22 years ago
Some conditions are an automatic YES and they are pushed through quickly because they make the local agencies numbers look good. A diagnosis of schizophrenia, as I recall, is an automatic. Bi-polar on the other hand is a tough go. AIDS is an automatic even now that drugs are letting people be pretty normal, but the rules have remained the same. So, again I urge you to go through the information. A friend of mine is diabetic, has a heart condition, some pretty severe problems with healing and can walk only limited distances and only with assistance He is not eligible for SSI because his job does not require him to stand. The nature of your job can have a lot to do with eligibility. At 48 you are likely to be considered young enough for retraining into an easier job. The standard is: Is there a job anywhere in the US that you could perform adequately. If you could only run a sno-cone machine and you live in upper Maine - you would be expected to move, at your own expense, to Phoenix.

Now, nearly all contested claims that work their way up the judicial ladder are successful. The judiciary is way more sympathetic than SSA - but of course it doesn't come from their budget. An experienced attorney can almost certainly get you your money, but you need the resources to wait it out. Another nasty aspect is that the agency knows that by going slow on some claims, that some of the claimants will die and never have to be paid.
downsouth
22 years ago
I am 55 yrs old, diagnosed with degenerative disc disease in 1995. In the mornings, I am very stiff and have trouble getting out of bed. I also have arthritis in my neck and I believe he said spine as well. Now I have something wrong with my hands and the pain is really bad. My shoulders hurt so bad and my arms hurt all over, so all of this pain is probably related. It even runs down my left leg and my left foot feels numb/tingling. It's all on the left side except the right arm and shoulder that I can't raise except to my elbow. My neurologist is doing an EMG test tomorrow. He seems to think all this pain in my hands is coming from the arthritis in my neck, but it could be carpal tunnel syndrome from 25 years of typing. I also have numbness on the left side of my face and my left ear feels numb, as well as the left side of my mouth and around my left eye. The best way to describe it is it feels like I have had a novacaine shot and the effects are wearing off. It also feels like something is crawling on your skin. He did an MRI of my brain about a year ago when I had all these same symptoms, as he said it sounded like mini strokes but the MRI was normal.

Does anyone know if degenerative disc disease is one of the diseases on the list that SS has? I am currently working part time from home (my company is getting ready to close this office so I will be out of a job soon anyway), but I am quitting next week because I can't type anymore. I only worked 10 hrs this week and I was in pain every second.

Is it okay to ask my doctor if he thinks I could qualify for disability? I am on three pain medications and I could never take this medication and drive to work. We could make it on my husband's salary until I was approved, but would definitely need the disability income to meet our budget every month.

Thanks so much for any advice.
gandbb
22 years ago
By all means ask your doctor. You want to know what his response is going to be. You don't have a listed condition. There are very few things that merit an automatic approval, but don't let that discourage you. Based on what you have written about yourself - age, severity of problem, etc. I think you can make a very good case for yourself. Your unemployment office should be able to get the ball rolling for you. You can also begin the procedure on-line.

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