Real life Social Security disability stories: "John"

John started working at thirteen picking tobacco. He went home at the end of the day with his hands black from the tar. And he didn’t stop working until fifty when cluster headaches forced him to quit his job at the iron works factory. Cluster headaches are referred to as “suicide headaches” because you wish you are dead. The pain often starts out behind one eye, takes over the whole body, and can last for hours making the person having the headache.

 

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His broad shoulders and muscular arms heaved like mountains shifting as he hid his face behind his thick hands, which were made rough by picking tobacco and burns from shaping iron. The tears he tried to hide behind his hands poured out of the corners of his covered eyes. “I just want to work,” he said between sobs. “It’s who I am. I don’t know anything else.”

He had no other option but to enter the confusing world of Social Security disability. More than likely, he didn’t want to be there to meet with a lawyer as he sat across from me on the other side of a polished wood conference table.

Since he only completed eighth grade and was fifty years old, he had no other options because his headaches prevented him from working eight hours a day, five days a week.

For seven years before this sad realization, despite the headaches, John continued to work, much longer than most people would. His job required him to stand next to a blast furnace during his eight-hour shifts where he shaped iron. Not exactly the safest place because one misstep could lead to severe burns, loss of a limb, or incineration.

The headaches started seven years before, but he managed to continue working in spite of the pain and wear and tear on his body. At first, he only had them a few times a week.

And they came in unrelenting cycles that can last for days even weeks at a time if left untreated.

John suffered headaches several times a day. The headaches reduced him to weeping openly and lying in a dark room for hours wishing he were dead. He mentioned how he wished for death because the pain would not stop.

And this wasn’t a man or a man who cried regularly. No, he had a loving wife, who held his hand during the entire meeting at the conference table. His wife and intact marriage, children he adored, and a successful career gave him every reason to be happy. But the headaches threatened to break him every day with their viciousness and frequency, and they robbed him of joy and satisfaction in his life he’d clearly earned through years of hard work.

Fortunately, he had good insurance, which is not often the case for many Social Security disability applicants, and he received treatment from a neurologist at Wake Forest University Hospital, one of the better hospitals in the South and in the United States.

Somehow, he managed to keep working, although that did not last.

The doctor prescribed medication in the form of multiple syringes filled with just enough medicine to stop a headache.

While at work, he stored his syringes in a locker. His work locker sat in a room about thirty feet from his workstation. When he felt a headache coming on, he paused his work, rushed over to the locker, put in the combination, pulled out the syringe, yanked down his pants, and stabbed himself in the leg.

Sometimes he made it and staved off the headache. Sometimes he didn’t. But his employer accommodated him because he was a great worker, and the job was a tough one. Many people were unwilling to work that hard in such a dangerous environment.

This kind of situation occurs frequently in disability claimants. They work hard, develop a reputation as a hard, competent worker, and then some physical impairment, mental impairment, or a combination strikes, lessening that ability.

His headaches happened a few times per week, and, most of the time, he still went back to work.

Eventually, John developed a tolerance for the shots. This didn’t mean he was out of options, however, because his doctor prescribed oxygen to stop the headaches. Under normal circumstances that would improve the situation, but not when the patient worked next to a blast furnace where leaky oxygen could blow up the entire factory.

He had no other choice but to quit, and, given his lack of education, age, and need to lug around an oxygen tank, he ceased to be able to work.

All he ever did was work and do what he was supposed to for his family, and, through no fault of his own, due to the unrelenting cluster headaches, his life changed forever, stripping him of his livelihood, his dignity, and his identity.

Something he’d done most of his wife from which he’d derived satisfaction, a sense of being, and an identity was stripped from him through no fault of his own.

The tears from this proud man represented the realization that no matter what he did he could not continue his current job, a good job, but which he could no longer perform due to the constraints of his cluster headaches.

Of course, he stopped receiving health insurance soon after he lost his job because health care for some odd and unfair reason is linked to your job in the United States.

He only received insurance coverage if he made a steep monthly payment of hundreds of dollars more per month, which shot upward once he stopped working, through so-called COBRA, a federal statute that allows a worker under a work insurance plan to continue on that plan for three months after the job ends. After that he’d have to foot the bill himself, which was unaffordable.

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The back stories to most of these cases play out like John’s situation. Heartbreak and loss on an individual basis by the thousands.

Clients come to see the lawyer after their ailments have robbed them of the person they used to be and will likely never be again. A broken spirit normally doesn’t have a visual representation except that it manifests in every word, in slumping shoulders, and in the eyes, which often have a distant knowing as if the person remembers better days.

But the meeting with the lawyer, a seminal moment in any disability claimant’s life, is normally the beginning of another stage of a process that can take years with a disappointing payoff if any.

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John lost his first claim for disability. Most initial claims (sometimes almost eighty percent) are denied. He appealed. He lost again. About the same percentage are denied the second time. Then he hired me as his attorney, but he did not receive a hearing until over a year-and-a-half later. A few years ago, it took years to get to a hearing. It is better now, but there’s always the chance it will get worse.

In those days (2006), the Social Security Administration (SSA) used paper files, which meant everything submitted had to be file stamped and copied so that the attorney and the claimant had a record.

SSA routinely lost documents and records, and it still loses things, although electronic filing makes it easier to prove when a case is filed. In fact, they did it so much that they developed a euphemism for it: “misassociated.” One of the better examples of Washington, D.C. government lawyers saying “lost” in a more palatable way. Knowing this, SSA allows the claimant to petition for “good cause” that an untimely filing shouldn’t be dismissed. It’s a bit of a safety valve, which proved to be good for John.

SSA lost John’s Request for Hearing form that we filed, but fortunately we kept a copy. This delayed his case a few more months, which may not seem like a lot, but it can be the difference between life and death. People lose housing, access to medication, can’t eat, and lose hope.

Those disability benefits, however minimal, are sometimes the difference between housing and homelessness and life and death.

In order to prevail in a Social Security disability case, a claimant has to go to an administrative hearing, which is like a mini-trial in front of a judge with a robe, court reporter, and recorded testimony. It used to be all the hearings were in person. Now many are by phone or video, which has sped up processing time.

Prior to the hearing, medical records are submitted and are eventually admitted at the hearing as evidence.

The judge, referred to as an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), takes testimony from the claimant. If the claimant has an attorney, the attorney questions the claimant.

Technical terms are bandied between the lawyer and ALJ before the claimant gets to talk. Then the claimant must answer questions about his or her life and why he or she can’t work.

The whole thing is humiliating because the claimant’s medical issues are described in detail as are the most intimate parts of those records such as incontinence, impotence, mental health issues, and physical ailments. And the ALJs aren’t always nice. Fortunately, this judge was friendly and respectful. Note: you will learn about a mean judge later in this book.

John had other problems besides his cluster headaches. Due to the nature of his work, his back took quite a beating, so he had considerable back problems and took powerful medications such as Oxycontin (this was pre-Opioid crisis being in the news). Oxycontin makes people zombies, and no one can drive while being on it. It is in the same family as heroin, and people often get hooked on it. If ever there were a drug that fueled the opioid crisis, it is Oxycontin.

Due to his back problems, he developed urinary incontinence issues, which required him to wear an adult diaper.

So, I had to take John through his life, work, and injuries. This meant asking him about incontinence, which is always relevant. If a person can’t hold urine or poop, then he or she cannot work.

Without going blow by blow into the testimony, John had to answer various questions about how he only completed through the eighth grade, how he couldn’t work due to his pain and physical limitations, which included peeing in his pants and debilitating headaches, and how he wasn’t educated enough to do anything else. Then he got to talk about pissing and shitting his pants.

SSA requires you to prove you cannot do any other job, so we had to make John look as bad as possible, which was as bad as he really was. He truly was a hollowed-out shell of a man.

After about an hour of questions from the judge and then me, we came to the crucial moment where John described his stabbing himself in the leg with the syringe, developing a tolerance, and then it moved to the oxygen tank.

John did well and held in his emotions in spite of the humiliation, but it got to be too much, as it would for anyone.

When asked when he couldn’t work anymore, John responded, “I can’t drag the oxygen in front of the flame. I don’t want to kill anyone or hurt anyone. All I ever wanted to do was work. That’s who I am. I don’t know what I am now, now that I can’t work.”

He choked out the last sentence, and then he buried his face behind those same strong hands and wept. No one asked anymore questions. No one needed to.

Sometimes testimony speaks for itself, and this certainly did. Unfortunately, it never should have come to this. John shouldn’t have had to wait and go through this degrading ordeal, but, sadly, that’s Social Security disability. It is a broken system, a uniquely American trial by ordeal with many misconceptions. And those misconceptions are echoed through the babbling of clueless and cruel idiots who shape the perception of disability claimants.

Social Security disability recipients are a favorite target. At least once a week, someone tells me about someone down the street, who is “on disability”. Invariably, the person on disability can do yard work, go on vacation, and live a life of leisure, according to the story teller. Webster’s Dictionary defines a caste as “a division of society based on differences of wealth, inherited rank or privilege, profession, occupation, or race.” Disability recipients are a caste because they are classified and defined as a “taker”. It is how much of society defines them, and, in my experience from handling hundreds of these cases, it is unfair and inaccurate. Certainly in John’s instance and in virtually every case I’ve seen.

Eventually John prevailed and received benefits, a whopping $1,200 per month, barely enough to live on and far less than he made in his job. He told me over and over, “I just wish I could work,” a constant refrain from disability recipients.

Sadly, John was one of the lucky ones. Over two-thirds of applicants never receive benefits. And those who do can hope for maybe $1,000 per month on average. Certainly a broken system even when it “works.”