Thread: ssdi hearing
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Old 09-10-2011, 02:34 AM
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alice md alice md is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2009
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10 yr Member
alice md alice md is offline
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alice md's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 884
10 yr Member
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My situation with regards to working is quite unusual, but possibly there are others like that, so I will share it with you.

I was easily given 100% disability, but I did not want that. what I wanted was to keep on working as much as I possibly can with proper accommodations. I also wanted to receive medical treatment and support according to the severity of my illness and not the fact that I was working. ( the fact that I was working made some narrow minded physicians think that I am much less ill than I am).

It was a very long and exhausting struggle (which has not ended yet), to receive that. I was very fortunate to find partners who were ready to help. The head of my dept. who let me do what I can, until we gradually found the proper niche for me; Other co-workers, collaborators and colleagues; My occupational physician; my family who supported me in all those decisions. And recently my neurologist and respiratory physicians.

I was also fortunate to have some savings we could use, until we eventually get the money from my private disability insurance. (who denied my claims, because according to them I already had MG and knew it when I made the insurance and was working full time (including night shifts) as a physician and mother of two boys).

I find it quite ironical that the insurance company thinks I should have doubted 20 years ago, as a medical student, what two leading MG experts said. According to them, despite having complete (or near complete) disappearance of all my symptoms, without any treatment, I should have known that I have MG and had spontaneous remission for 15 years even though I was clearly told by my physicians that I do not have MG and never had it.

According to the insurance company, I should have known then (as a young medical student), that the MG expert who took care of me and confidently told me that I do not have and never had MG, is a narrow minded arrogant person who still thinks even now, that you can't have MG with no antibodies and a normal SFEMG.
They also think that being a physician I am also a prophet, and should have known that 10 years later, MuSK antibodies will be discovered; and 15 years later, I will have a severe relapse of my "non-existent" illness, and that it will take another 5 years (after my first hospitalization with "MG crisis") until my illness will finally be diagnosed (probably too late for treatment to be significantly effective).

In fact, I not only knew that I have MG. I deliberately avoided proper medical care, so that my condition gradually deteriorated. All this was a well planned scheme to get the money I don't deserve to get from them.

And yes, I do have a lawyer and I am going to take them to court.
But, this is what I believe we all have to deal with, one way or the other.
Fight for our ability and disability at the same time.
trying not to
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