Hey Dew!

Great Smoky Mountains -- are you in Tennessee?? Acccording to statistics I have seen on the net, Tennessee has the lowest disability approval rate.

Can you speak clearly? If not, get thee to a speech therapist PRONTO!! It will probably cost around $100-150, but the resulting evaluation and report could make the difference between being approved and denied.

If you are having trouble breathing, your GP/internest needs to put this in his records -- a breathing test (with the machine) would be better, but generally, ONLY pulmologists or MG specialists have this equipment in their offices. If your internist knows how to do the simple breathing test -- having you count out loud to see how far you get before running out of breath, get him to do that and document how bad it is. ANYTHING like this will help. GET your own copy of these medical records and take them WITH you to the hearing.

I'll have to go look up the impairments list on the Soc Sec website and post the link for you, but basically, the "automatic" MG disabling symptoms are significant difficulty with speech, swallowing, or breathing OR significant weakness in your limbs (arms and legs) while on prescribed medication (Mestinon will do).

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/disabi...dult.htm#11_12

11.12 Myasthenia gravis. With:

A. Significant difficulty with speaking, swallowing, or breathing while on prescribed therapy; or

B. Significant motor weakness of muscles of extremities on repetitive activity against resistance while on prescribed therapy.

IF you can get your doctor to use any of these EXACT words in your medical records (IF these words are TRUE, of course), this should improve your chances of winning your appeal!

BTW, amitriptyline is on at least one "take with caution" list for MGers -- might cause problems, might not. I don't know about the other med you are taking.

http://www.mginc.mb.ca/docs/MG_DrugList_Final-1.pdf