My girlfriend, a landscape gardener, has PD and having to work with PD is really doing a number on her, mostly because of her tremors, the rigidity on the left side of her body, her frequent every-20-minutes urination needs, and the terrible fatigue that comes of PD and working in 90+ degree heat. It's brutalizing her. She's in tears a lot, is always exhausted, is suffering also from insomnia and depression, has to take naps during the day just to make it through another day. She's her own boss, and I think she ought to shut down her little one-person business and apply for SSDI, but the fact is, she can still make it to work, if only because she's stoic like that and refuses to give up, no matter the cost to her health or her sanity.

She's also having a terrible time running her business, the paperwork and all, because of mental fatigue. She's become extremely forgetful and that aspect of her business is in shambles. She has a fairly severe case of ADHD (her 55 year old brother has been on SSDI for like 20 years because of his ADHD), but PD only worsens the problem.

So, in terms of SSDI, who or what determines when you can no longer work?

The other issue is, she has minimized her problems when she's gone to see her doctors, again because she's stoic but also because she's still trying to deny them. Recently, though, she's beginning to see that her problems are getting worse ....

Me, I want her to stop work now or at the end of the summer and spend the next six months going to her doctors and telling them the unvarnished truth about what she's experiencing, so that those experiences will be reflected in her records, when she goes to apply for SSDI.

Is this the right way to go about things? Or does one have to be told by a doctor, you can no longer work?

She's going to her GP tomorrow and I"m trying to ready her for the visit.

thanks!