bleh number two

Upon receipt of your request for reconsideration we had your claim independently reviewed by a physician and disability examiner in the State agency which works with us in making disability determinations. The evidence in your case has been thoroughly evaluated; this includes the medical evidence and the additional information received since hte original decision. We find htat the previous determination denying your claim was proper under the law. Included in this notice is an explanation of the decision we made on your claim and how we arrived at it. This notice also identifies the legal requirements for your type of claim.

You said you are disabled due to mental impairments. The medical evidence indicates that you do have some limitations, but you are still able to move about in a satisfactory manner. You are able to understand, remember and carry instructions [sic] and care for your own needs. We realize that your condition prevents you from doing any of your past work, but it does not prevent you from doing other jobs which require less mental effort. Based on your age, education and past work experience, we have concluded that you can do other work. Therefore, a period of disability cannot be established, and your claim is denied at this time.

even though i was expecting it, that doesn’t make it feel any worse. what they’re saying is that, despite the fact that i used to work as a software tester and a typesetter, now i could work at mcdonald’s or wal-mart, so they won’t give me disability… i’d rather die than work at wal-mart, and forget about my being able to do anything in food service… i guess now i have to get an attorney… 8P

8 thoughts on “bleh number two”

  1. Oh, I rarely tell superiors that they are messing things up.

    I’m more the manic grin and gleaming eyes with hidden meaning that will race round behind him with a broom and toolset till the boss gets the message that we are having to tidy up after his mistakes. Normally he leaves us alone in the end!

    Although recently I did get rather sarcastic with one of my class teachers as I was being told that I had to write down some of the official curriculum bullet points as to what my last essay was addressing specifically. This was after it had been handed in and supposedly marked off passed. He stood over me asking me to write them quickly down and then go off and print off a cover sheet and I told him boisterously to give me the numbers and titles of each point HE thought I should put on it because I was buggered if I could remember anything I’d done the day before, let alone rush around like a blue arsed fly after consigning an essay to the “done bin” in my mind!! He started getting his back up and I had to remind him of the brain injury causing the problems with memory, so he gave me a sheet with the points on and I spent the next 10 minutes looking at them and deciding which to add to a cover sheet on my essay.

    It got done, but I’m not sure if he was too happy with me. In an employee situation, that sort of thing might just be unacceptable and even a menial job employer might just let me go! Jobs are not guaranteed, you have something like 12-16 weeks here before the employer has to write you up a contract, they can let you go for any reason anytime upto 12-18 months before you get any so called state employment protection.

    I/m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but when I was in a job centre years ago and a blind man was found work as a telephonist and the council employee went round announcing it at the top of her voice I thought that her short term aims weren’t compatible with the long term employment plans of the guy she had just pushed into the job. He didn’t know if he was really suitable for it. He was looking for something to stop him being lonely (He was about 4-5 years off retirement, single and being blind kind of restricts your lifestyle outside of blind communities)

    In a way, I am actually scared they will try to get me back into work. A psychiatrist who says my recovery has been “wonderful”, a physical reason found for my chronic fatigue where action could return me to better health, although still left with light, sound and motion sensitivity which were the core reasons getting me off work in the first place!! I’ve got used to the basic level of living a non-disabled person lives. I have learned to do without the additional funding for transport/care that disabled people get but my brain specialist prevented me getting, for whatever personal reason. I just hope they don’t take the micky and try and get me back into work, because I know that any physical or mental stress from unconcerned or thoughtless employers will make me collapse into delirium, like happened a couple of weeks ago!

  2. That’s a very screwed up standard practice.

    As for the drain on the coffers that is Iraq, I’d think that most people have said “no”, but that our “leaders” have basically ignored them, either for their own political gains or because they don’t feel they’re accountable to the people. It’s going to take a lot more than a band-aid, yes, and the sooner we actively keep making the wound bigger, the more time we’ll have to heal it up.

  3. according to my understanding, even if you’re a vegetable you have to get an attorney involved, because everybody gets denied disability on application and appeal. the standard practice is to deny on application, deny on appeal, get an attorney and get disability.

    at the same time, this country is hemorrhaging money to fight a war that they’re never going to win, that is being fought for unethical reasons, that most of the world’s population doesn’t approve of, but our “leaders” say it’s necessary and we apparently don’t have the balls to say no. which gives me the idea that it’s going to take a lot more than a band-aid to patch up this hole… 8/

  4. the basic problem with that approach is that i don’t normally apply for minimum-wage jobs because, over here, the minimum-wage employers use “illegal” drug testing as a condition of employment, which is a violation of the civil rights that i’m supposedly guaranteed by the constitution.

    if they didn’t, it would almost be amusing to find out how long i would last in such a job, if it weren’t so depressing. the past two “skilled” jobs that i have had, i have been fired from because of things i said which weren’t “appropriate” (basically, i told the owner that he was a stupid idiot because he wouldn’t let me do the job in a way that i knew it would get done without screwups), which makes me believe that any minimum-wage job i had would be all the more likely to elicit “inappropriate” responses from me…

  5. I wonder how their view would be if you had a menial minimum wage job or two on your CV where you had been “let go” because you were even unable to fulfill those jobs?

    Doorman at hotel : you get let go because of saying “innappropriate things” due to brain injury making your speech patterns unrestricted.

    Working on a cash register : You get let go because your till never adds up and customers complain that getting served by you takes too long as you count and recount money, losing track of it too often.

    Or simply sacked for bad timekeeping/too much sickness days backed up by your doctors reports during those periods.

    Sometimes documented evidence is your defence and you need to look at what you have to fight your corner. It theoretically should be a little bit easier for Americans to collate similar evidence from like cases, due to the fact you have gun laws and the numbers of brain injuries caused by people being shot in the head, plus the growing thousands of troops involved in IED’s in the warzones coming back and becoming a strain on the medical system and of course the numbers in American FOotball getting brain injuries. Your lawyer should be armed to the hilt with that sort of info.

    Here I have no chance. Hell, I go to specialists for medication and they say they didn’t know it was used to treat a brain injury (Although that avenue is now closed due to recent physical problems relating to my liver)

  6. Of course. Unless you’re a vegetable that can’t do anything, they don’t think you qualify as disabled. (And even then, they’d probably deny once.) So, I suppose it’s time to get the lawyers involved. Wish that they’d fix the system, though.

  7. i would have gotten an attorney involved sooner, because this is actually the 4th time i’ve been denied. unfortunately, i was working when the first denial happened, and by the time it would have made a difference, it was already too late to file an appeal. the second time i applied, they took almost 8 months to get around to telling me that i was denied, and, once again, i was working – albeit at a different job, which i got fired from shortly afterward. so this is the first time i’ve actually been denied on a reconsideration. it’s actually just as well, because the attorneys that i have talked to say they can’t help me until i’ve been denied on appeal anyway, but it’s depressing as hell to have to go through all this crap, when the government is wasting so much money fighting a losing war against a concept… 8P it’s time this country got its priorities straight…

  8. YES get an attorney. That is the biggest thing I’ve learned about SSDI in the past year–that they even turn down terminal cancer patients unless an attorney is involved. Which I guess explains why there are so damn MANY SSDI lawyers… Apparently standard practice is to apply, be turned down, get a lawyer, get approved. Which implies that the system is badly broken, but, meh…

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