One of the things that has kept me from writing and has added to my depression and anxiety that I had posted about prior is that I have been denied my Social Security disability benefits. So many hours or hard work, chasing doctors to get in their own paperwork, doing everything right as followed by my mentor…only to be turned down.

There is a common thought that most people are turned down the first time.  Next comes the Reconsideration process, where you appeal, make your doctors do more paperwork, and another set of people at Social Security look at your application.  I am not taking any chances, I am definitely going to use a lawyer because it is obvious that I am incapable of “working” the system.

My advice to anyone applying for disability is to use a lawyer right away, I can’t tell you how much I regret not doing this.  I just felt confident in my case and in the step-by-step instructions that I used, but the disability lawyers only take a percentage of your past earnings, and take nothing if they do not succeed.

One of the reasons that I am so angry is that it is obvious that they did not fully read my paperwork that I had painstakingly put together, going over every symptom and it’s effect on me and why every symptom affected my ability to work.

Here’s the main reason that this is so clear:

“We realize your condition prevents you from doing your usual work; however it does not prevent you from doing other types of low stress work requiring less physical effort”.

Excuse me, I had a desk job.  Can someone (maybe Disability) explain to me what might be less physically stressful to my body?

This has put our family into even worse financial difficulty.  We are going to start the Reconsideration process for me and start the Disability process for Grant.  We now are at the point where we are eligible for Food Stamps and Energy Assistance so hopefully this can stop the “bleeding” a little bit. Both of us have been doing better than usual in our free-lance work, but it seems like the clients want the work right away, but are slow to pay or there are difficulties in the invoicing process.  Expanding upon my voiceover career is the one thing I think I could do, but I am so caught up in paperwork, doctors and being sick.

I’m going to end this now because this is starting to increase my depression and anxiety.