Wow, I don't know if there is anything I can say to truly help you except to agree with several things you said. Yes, you can definitely be fired when you are disabled. It happened to me two years ago.
I am in a mess nearly identical to yours. My LTD company officially dumped me at the end of October. Their rationale? "Somatoform disorder" and "self reported symtoms".
It's a real quandry. Here I have a neuropsyche exam that pinpoints slowed mental processing and cerebral dysfunction, yet all the LTD company can see is that the "personality" portion of the exam indicated that I was pre-occupied with my health, which they have interpreted as somatoform disorder. They even paid a sham shrink to "confirm" the "diagnosis".
Um, sometimes you HAVE to be pre-occupied with your health in order to get appropriate medical care. Especially when you have a systemic ailment that is frequently mis-diagnosed. Either your neuro is extraordinarily lucky or he was lying, because most people I know with MS or any number of autoimmune diseases was mis-diagnosed early on, including me.
It's truly humiliating, being treated like a criminal or a liar at the very least just trying to obtain the benefits that you paid into in the event of such a crisis. I spent three weeks coming up with a rebuttal for my 16 page denial letter, and it was pretty much impossible to not feel hopeless and discouraged. I am having nightmares about losing my home, about becoming seriously ill due to not being able to afford medical care, and about trying to go back to work and getting fired on my first day because I just can't keep up.
I keep telling my husband I would do just about anything to be able to go out and get a job. I don't care what job, just anything that would get me away from the bullying tactics of the LTD company, the endless paperwork, the doctors who run the other way when they find out you're disabled. I had no idea when I slgned up for LTD coverage that I was signing away my dignity.
I am terrified to go to a doctor now, because if I am honest and admit to the myriad of symptoms I experience, I know the mental health questions will be next. Which would be fine if that's where my problems were. Except that then it seems everyone forgets that this whole nightmare started with an autoimmune disease.
The neuropathy has been a particularly tough one to get taken seriously. Because those lightning-bolt pains, those weird buzzing sensations, those numb fingers never happen while I'm being examined. I can't help that I don't fit into a textbook definition of a common curable disease, but I honestly have a lot better things to do than to make this stuff up.
It's almost impossible to know what approach to take in a doctor's office. I've actually been kicked out on a few occasions for being a know-it-all when I tried to reference some articles from the NIH website. I've also been treated like a complete moron, with a doctor practically patting me on the head and saying, "there, there, don't worry about a thing, you're just suffering from stress."
Oh, and I've been told by two rheumatologist's offices that they "don't support disability". I got mad the second time and asked them what exactly I was supposed to do to become "un-disabled". The reply was that if I would just do cardiovascular exercise, I would be cured.
So this is what happens when doctors get fed up with going round and round with the LTD companies. They simply deny that their patient could even be disabled, even when it's obvious. Most of the time, all the patient is doing is trying their best to have a life.
Despite all this, I haven't given up, and I hope you haven't either. Even if you can no longer leave the house and your only form of communication is a computer, do what you can to make the world aware of your situation. There are times I feel the world would be much more comfortable if I were invisible, but I use what's left of my cognitive function and energy to fight for what I have earned.
Hang in there. Like I've said before, being sick is a full time job.
fanfaire
