Disability

We went down to Los Angeles around April 1st this year for my fantasy baseball draft. We always follow the auction with a stay at our old friends Carol and Steve’s place in Santa Monica. While we were whiling away the weekend in the backyard (we might have done something else but I was too tired to do much of anything except whiling time away) our friend Sue came by to hang out. Sue is a doctor and works at a public health clinic. She has a lot of experience with chronically ill patients. After about a half hour of general chat, she turned to me and asked if I had ever considered going on disability. I told her I had been thinking about it, but hadn’t formally started the process. She said that she thought it would be good for me to do it. It seems my life had narrowed down to work, disease and sitting at home. She did not see that as a life and told me that disability would allow me to rest, be in better condition to help my treatment, and allow me to do some of the things that made life worthwhile. My wife agreed with her completely and between the two of them had convinced me to start the process by the time the weekend was over.

The process is relatively straightforward. You get a form from the state, fill it out, give it to your doctor to fill out and sign, and send it in to the state offices that handle disability. They contact your employer to determine if you actually work there and what your pay is and a certain number of days after your last day of paid work, you begin to accrue your disability benefits. They send you a check every two weeks once you have been accruing benefits.

State disability insurance or SDI is a short term program that is administered by the state and paid for by insurance premiums that are taken out of your pay. Therefore it is administered by the state and bound by state regulations. It can last up to a year. If you are disabled for longer than that you switch to Federal Long Term Disability that is administered by the Social Security Administration. For HEP C it is a standard process because HEP C is one of the conditions that are covered in the state regulations. Your doctor can just write in the definitions from the state manual on your form and it will be processed routinely. This is not to say there won’t be screw-ups, because there will, but at least you will be fixing problems in the process and not be trying to convince the state agency that they should be covering a non-standard condition. The bumps on the road to my approval will be discussed in an upcoming post.

I stopped working on April 23rd and started accruing benefits on May 3rd. It made a world of difference. I was able to rest. I slept 11-12 hours a night the first few weeks and took naps in the afternoon. I was able to get out of the house for brief excursions. I didn’t have to deal with the stress of work wearing me down. As I was mildly to seriously anemic during the last several months of treatment, being able to rest was hugely important. Dr. Sue and my wife were right, it definitely helped make life better and treatment easier to handle. I wish I had done it sooner. If I had, I might be less exhausted now that I am back to work.