dangerdave
Chief Bottlewasher
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2011
- Messages
- 2,729
- Reaction score
- 901
Since you wonderful folks have known me for a few years now, I guess this is as good a place as any to zent. So, here it goes.
After three plus years of being unable to work due to her back problems, my wife is finally getting her hearing with social security next week. After being rejected on two previous attempts, we will finally have our turn in front of a real person who will decide our financial future. At this point, it is make or break for us. If we fail in this appeal, we will most likely lose our home, and our hopes living above the poverty level in retirement.
My wife, Johnna, was working under a disability insurance policy through Hartford Life Insurance---provided by her emplyer---when her back went bad in late 2010. Some of you will remember me saying that I started making wine to help her with her pain. Anyway, the money we have received from Hartford is the only thing that kept us above water. Without it, we would have lost everything when she stopped working. We had bought a house the year before, and had gotten married the year before that. Naturally, we had big plans for our future, and neither of us saw this disability come---like anyone does!
The disability policy though Hartford says that they will pay her for 36 months if she cannot perform the job she was doing when she became disabled. Then, she will be "evaluated" to see if she can perform "any work". That time has come. They, in their conflict of interest, have determined that she can work "any" job. They have stopped their payments, now, at the same time our hearing with SS has come up. We have lawyers fighting for SS, but due to financial restraints, we have been forced to appeal to Hartford on our own. We do not have money to pay a lawyer up front to fight Hartford (for money we may never get), and the amount of money involved (the difference between her potential SS payments and the check from Hartford) is not enough to get any lawyer interested. I.e., they have bigger fish to fry. We may win both (best scenario, not likely), lose one or the other (totally doable), or lose both (my greatest fear). As an eternally optomistic man, I am amazed at my overwhelming feeling that we are going to fail. I have wrestle six months with this pending hearing approaching, and I can't shake this sense of impending doom.
If this has already bored you to tears, I apologize. What I wanted to do was share Johnna's letter. This is what she wrote to Hartford to appeal the termination of her disability payments. She will also ask to be allowed to read this to the judge next Wednesday.
If this helps anyone who understands her situation or anyone who lives with someone who has a chronic ailment, I will consider this a good work. Here is her tale in her own words.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to appeal the termination of long term disability benefits paid to me under the above policy stemming from my former employment with Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc. It is my assertion that the decision to terminate said benefit payments does not take into consideration my continually deteriorating condition, the daily debilitation caused by my chronic pain, nor the average level of activity which I can perform on a regular (or daily) basis. Included is a letter from my doctor stating his opinion on this matter.
In early 2010, six months before I became unable to work as a hospitality manager for Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW), I began regularly experiencing mild to moderate dull aching pain in my middle and lower back. As time passed and the pain persisted, I was able to “work through it” with the aid of OTC anti-inflammatory medications and frequent breaks. However, since my job required a great deal of lifting, bending, and walking (12-16 hours, 5 to 6 days weekly), the ability to perform my job adequately came more and more in question. Although I did my utmost to conceal my escalating difficulties from my superiors, subordinates, and my family, I could not hide it from myself. Soon, while at work, the pain drove me to hide my tears---and fears---in a toilet stall of the women’s restroom. I did not want to face what the increasing pain might mean. I feared the loss of my job (which I dearly loved and sorely miss), the loss of income, and the loss of usefulness. My coworkers at Buffalo Wild Wings were like family to me. The eventual loss of their companionship broke my heart.
The summer of 2010 brought more pain, this time throughout my body, in my muscles and joints. This new pain accompanied constant fatigue and confusion, headaches and dizziness. In October of 2010, with the urging of my superiors at BWW and my family, I sought medical advice from my long time primary physician, Mark Hodges, M.D., for what I hoped would be a temporary and treatable condition. On November 8, 2010, with the advice of doctor Hodges, I made a claim for disability coverage via the aforementioned policy, and with an ache in my heart, said farewell to my friends at BWW.
The poking and prodding commenced. Baseline x-rays showed bulging and deteriorated discs in my back; in my cervical, lumbar, and thoracic regions. Bone spurs jutted from the vertebrae in numerous places, aggravating the surrounding nerves. My neck gave me headaches, my middle back made it painful to bend or turn, and my lower back severely hindered my ability to sit or stand for any length of time. The headaches were dull and throbbing, rarely relieved with medications, and often involved burning pain shooting into one or both shoulders. My lower back maintained a constant dull ache, like an abscessed tooth---persistent and unrelenting. My middle (thoracic) spine was the worst. The MIR showed a disc bulging into my spinal column. At unpredictable times, with just the slightest twist or turn, the disc would brush against the raw nerves of my spinal cord, causing excruciating stabbing pain that could only be dulled by strong narcotics. The pain and medications often caused confusion, profuse sweating, shortness of breath, and nausea.
To top it all, the “new pain” I had been experiencing was diagnosed (via the 18 tender point test) as fibromyalgia, an often misunderstood syndrome. Luckily, my doctor was my strongest advocate, and was willing to try various forms of management. After several trials, certain antidepressants were prescribed which---in spite of some undesirable side effects---helped to reduce the pain in my joints. Unfortunately, regular exercise (one of the best ways to control fibromyalgia pain) remained out of reach due to my chronic back pain.
Since I have begun seeking treatment in late 2010, I have suffered through: ill-advised chiropractic manipulations that made my pain worse; numerous epidural injections into my spine with steroids and pain medicine with unbearable pain and side effects; a brief stint with a TENS unit (electrical shock) that aggravated instead of relieved; and a brave go at physical therapy sessions which left me dizzy and couch-bound for the intervening days. All of the surgical physicians I have seen (neurologists/orthopedists) say the same thing. As long as I can walk and talk, breath and move, they won’t touch me. Given the condition of my back, surgery is too risky, and would very likely do more harm than good. Go home, they say. Take your meds. Come back when you get worse. For me, it has been nothing less than a prison sentence.
As a pathologist, Dr. Hodges has prescribed many different medication regimens, including fentanyl medication patches (a pain medicine 100 times more potent than morphine), antidepressants, narcotics, steroids, supplements, and anti-inflammatories. I am appalled by the number of pills I have been forced to swallow with little or no relief. Becoming addicted to (rather than dependant on) some of these potent treatments has been one of my greatest fears. As a result, I restrain from taking anything until the pain becomes unbearable.
It’s hard for me to believe that this all began little more than three years ago. All of the days of my life between then and now have run together in a blur of pain, as my condition(s) continue to deteriorate. My world has literally shrunk to the confines of my house and the elusive comforts of my family room sofa. I used to work at a job that I loved for 50 to 60 hours a week. Now I can’t even do a light load of laundry, or push the vacuum around, or sit and read with my grandchildren, or make love with my husband without suffering---sometimes for days---with the consequences. Some days I don’t feel really bad (relatively speaking), but those days are growing farther apart.
Before 2010, my husband (a veteran firefighter for 20+ years) and I were avid travelers and adventurers. We often went camping, hiking, snowboarding, mountain biking. After dating for seven years, we had married in 2008 and bought a wonderful home in 2009. Now he (the wonderful man that he is) spends most of his time at home when he is not working at the fire station. He is extremely helpful, and very understanding, fetching for me when I am flat on my back, or admonishing me when I overdo it. When I am depressed with my situation, he is there to lift me up and help me to see what we have, rather than dwell on what we have lost.
When I became disabled, we lost 30 percent of our household income. My husband (our “accountant”) somehow was able to adjust our budget so that we would not lose our home. I don’t know how he did it, but it was like a miracle. He worked extra hours, refinanced our house to get a lower rate, and gave up most of his recreational activities so that we could stay in the black---financially speaking. It bears telling that without the payments from Hartford, we would have floundered. We would have lost our home, our dreams, and our way. We would have ended in bankruptcy and misery. For that, I have you all to thank.
However, the cessation of our current payments from Hartford will involve another 30 percent loss of our current household income. Even upon reducing our budget to the bear bones, we would be forced to make impossible choices between food or medication, electricity or water, and would greatly curtail my ability to pay for health insurance and medications. Like many Americans effected by the Great Recession, we are currently “underwater” with our mortgage (having purchased our house a mere four years ago). Selling our home would be a financial disaster from which we might never recover. My greatest hope is to some day find a treatment, or medication, or surgery---whatever it might take---to improve my condition enough to return to work (of some kind) and ease the financial burden my husband has been forced to shoulder. The guilt that I bear for our currents difficulties is never far from my mind.
Currently, my activity level does not allow me to seek or maintain employment. Any prospective employer would be required to excuse me from work at any given time, or for any given day. I never know in advance what tomorrow will bring, what level of pain I will face. I cannot schedule or plan anything. I have been repeatedly forced to cancel or reschedule doctor’s appointments or visits from my family due to the unpredictability of my condition(s). I can sit or stand for no more than 30 minutes at a time before the level of my pain increases to the point where it causes nausea and dizziness, requiring me to lie flat on a soft surface (sometimes for hours) to take the pressure off of the herniated discs in my spine. Some days, I can push myself beyond these limits, but those days (maybe one or two a week) are invariably followed by days of suffering and the increased use of narcotics to dull the pain. There is no employer I can imagine who would or could retain an employee under such conditions. For this reason, and all those listed above, I request the reinstatement of my long term disability benefits.
Attached, you will find a letter from my primary physician, Mark Hodges, M.D., outlining my condition(s), treatments, and his professional opinion regarding my current employability. Please contact him or myself if you have any questions regarding anything contained in this letter.
I hope you can understand why I felt the need to write this letter in order to submit an appeal regarding the termination of my long term disability benefit. Thank you for taking the time to reconsider my position in this matter.
Sincerely,
Johnna D. Land
After three plus years of being unable to work due to her back problems, my wife is finally getting her hearing with social security next week. After being rejected on two previous attempts, we will finally have our turn in front of a real person who will decide our financial future. At this point, it is make or break for us. If we fail in this appeal, we will most likely lose our home, and our hopes living above the poverty level in retirement.
My wife, Johnna, was working under a disability insurance policy through Hartford Life Insurance---provided by her emplyer---when her back went bad in late 2010. Some of you will remember me saying that I started making wine to help her with her pain. Anyway, the money we have received from Hartford is the only thing that kept us above water. Without it, we would have lost everything when she stopped working. We had bought a house the year before, and had gotten married the year before that. Naturally, we had big plans for our future, and neither of us saw this disability come---like anyone does!
The disability policy though Hartford says that they will pay her for 36 months if she cannot perform the job she was doing when she became disabled. Then, she will be "evaluated" to see if she can perform "any work". That time has come. They, in their conflict of interest, have determined that she can work "any" job. They have stopped their payments, now, at the same time our hearing with SS has come up. We have lawyers fighting for SS, but due to financial restraints, we have been forced to appeal to Hartford on our own. We do not have money to pay a lawyer up front to fight Hartford (for money we may never get), and the amount of money involved (the difference between her potential SS payments and the check from Hartford) is not enough to get any lawyer interested. I.e., they have bigger fish to fry. We may win both (best scenario, not likely), lose one or the other (totally doable), or lose both (my greatest fear). As an eternally optomistic man, I am amazed at my overwhelming feeling that we are going to fail. I have wrestle six months with this pending hearing approaching, and I can't shake this sense of impending doom.
If this has already bored you to tears, I apologize. What I wanted to do was share Johnna's letter. This is what she wrote to Hartford to appeal the termination of her disability payments. She will also ask to be allowed to read this to the judge next Wednesday.
If this helps anyone who understands her situation or anyone who lives with someone who has a chronic ailment, I will consider this a good work. Here is her tale in her own words.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to appeal the termination of long term disability benefits paid to me under the above policy stemming from my former employment with Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc. It is my assertion that the decision to terminate said benefit payments does not take into consideration my continually deteriorating condition, the daily debilitation caused by my chronic pain, nor the average level of activity which I can perform on a regular (or daily) basis. Included is a letter from my doctor stating his opinion on this matter.
In early 2010, six months before I became unable to work as a hospitality manager for Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW), I began regularly experiencing mild to moderate dull aching pain in my middle and lower back. As time passed and the pain persisted, I was able to “work through it” with the aid of OTC anti-inflammatory medications and frequent breaks. However, since my job required a great deal of lifting, bending, and walking (12-16 hours, 5 to 6 days weekly), the ability to perform my job adequately came more and more in question. Although I did my utmost to conceal my escalating difficulties from my superiors, subordinates, and my family, I could not hide it from myself. Soon, while at work, the pain drove me to hide my tears---and fears---in a toilet stall of the women’s restroom. I did not want to face what the increasing pain might mean. I feared the loss of my job (which I dearly loved and sorely miss), the loss of income, and the loss of usefulness. My coworkers at Buffalo Wild Wings were like family to me. The eventual loss of their companionship broke my heart.
The summer of 2010 brought more pain, this time throughout my body, in my muscles and joints. This new pain accompanied constant fatigue and confusion, headaches and dizziness. In October of 2010, with the urging of my superiors at BWW and my family, I sought medical advice from my long time primary physician, Mark Hodges, M.D., for what I hoped would be a temporary and treatable condition. On November 8, 2010, with the advice of doctor Hodges, I made a claim for disability coverage via the aforementioned policy, and with an ache in my heart, said farewell to my friends at BWW.
The poking and prodding commenced. Baseline x-rays showed bulging and deteriorated discs in my back; in my cervical, lumbar, and thoracic regions. Bone spurs jutted from the vertebrae in numerous places, aggravating the surrounding nerves. My neck gave me headaches, my middle back made it painful to bend or turn, and my lower back severely hindered my ability to sit or stand for any length of time. The headaches were dull and throbbing, rarely relieved with medications, and often involved burning pain shooting into one or both shoulders. My lower back maintained a constant dull ache, like an abscessed tooth---persistent and unrelenting. My middle (thoracic) spine was the worst. The MIR showed a disc bulging into my spinal column. At unpredictable times, with just the slightest twist or turn, the disc would brush against the raw nerves of my spinal cord, causing excruciating stabbing pain that could only be dulled by strong narcotics. The pain and medications often caused confusion, profuse sweating, shortness of breath, and nausea.
To top it all, the “new pain” I had been experiencing was diagnosed (via the 18 tender point test) as fibromyalgia, an often misunderstood syndrome. Luckily, my doctor was my strongest advocate, and was willing to try various forms of management. After several trials, certain antidepressants were prescribed which---in spite of some undesirable side effects---helped to reduce the pain in my joints. Unfortunately, regular exercise (one of the best ways to control fibromyalgia pain) remained out of reach due to my chronic back pain.
Since I have begun seeking treatment in late 2010, I have suffered through: ill-advised chiropractic manipulations that made my pain worse; numerous epidural injections into my spine with steroids and pain medicine with unbearable pain and side effects; a brief stint with a TENS unit (electrical shock) that aggravated instead of relieved; and a brave go at physical therapy sessions which left me dizzy and couch-bound for the intervening days. All of the surgical physicians I have seen (neurologists/orthopedists) say the same thing. As long as I can walk and talk, breath and move, they won’t touch me. Given the condition of my back, surgery is too risky, and would very likely do more harm than good. Go home, they say. Take your meds. Come back when you get worse. For me, it has been nothing less than a prison sentence.
As a pathologist, Dr. Hodges has prescribed many different medication regimens, including fentanyl medication patches (a pain medicine 100 times more potent than morphine), antidepressants, narcotics, steroids, supplements, and anti-inflammatories. I am appalled by the number of pills I have been forced to swallow with little or no relief. Becoming addicted to (rather than dependant on) some of these potent treatments has been one of my greatest fears. As a result, I restrain from taking anything until the pain becomes unbearable.
It’s hard for me to believe that this all began little more than three years ago. All of the days of my life between then and now have run together in a blur of pain, as my condition(s) continue to deteriorate. My world has literally shrunk to the confines of my house and the elusive comforts of my family room sofa. I used to work at a job that I loved for 50 to 60 hours a week. Now I can’t even do a light load of laundry, or push the vacuum around, or sit and read with my grandchildren, or make love with my husband without suffering---sometimes for days---with the consequences. Some days I don’t feel really bad (relatively speaking), but those days are growing farther apart.
Before 2010, my husband (a veteran firefighter for 20+ years) and I were avid travelers and adventurers. We often went camping, hiking, snowboarding, mountain biking. After dating for seven years, we had married in 2008 and bought a wonderful home in 2009. Now he (the wonderful man that he is) spends most of his time at home when he is not working at the fire station. He is extremely helpful, and very understanding, fetching for me when I am flat on my back, or admonishing me when I overdo it. When I am depressed with my situation, he is there to lift me up and help me to see what we have, rather than dwell on what we have lost.
When I became disabled, we lost 30 percent of our household income. My husband (our “accountant”) somehow was able to adjust our budget so that we would not lose our home. I don’t know how he did it, but it was like a miracle. He worked extra hours, refinanced our house to get a lower rate, and gave up most of his recreational activities so that we could stay in the black---financially speaking. It bears telling that without the payments from Hartford, we would have floundered. We would have lost our home, our dreams, and our way. We would have ended in bankruptcy and misery. For that, I have you all to thank.
However, the cessation of our current payments from Hartford will involve another 30 percent loss of our current household income. Even upon reducing our budget to the bear bones, we would be forced to make impossible choices between food or medication, electricity or water, and would greatly curtail my ability to pay for health insurance and medications. Like many Americans effected by the Great Recession, we are currently “underwater” with our mortgage (having purchased our house a mere four years ago). Selling our home would be a financial disaster from which we might never recover. My greatest hope is to some day find a treatment, or medication, or surgery---whatever it might take---to improve my condition enough to return to work (of some kind) and ease the financial burden my husband has been forced to shoulder. The guilt that I bear for our currents difficulties is never far from my mind.
Currently, my activity level does not allow me to seek or maintain employment. Any prospective employer would be required to excuse me from work at any given time, or for any given day. I never know in advance what tomorrow will bring, what level of pain I will face. I cannot schedule or plan anything. I have been repeatedly forced to cancel or reschedule doctor’s appointments or visits from my family due to the unpredictability of my condition(s). I can sit or stand for no more than 30 minutes at a time before the level of my pain increases to the point where it causes nausea and dizziness, requiring me to lie flat on a soft surface (sometimes for hours) to take the pressure off of the herniated discs in my spine. Some days, I can push myself beyond these limits, but those days (maybe one or two a week) are invariably followed by days of suffering and the increased use of narcotics to dull the pain. There is no employer I can imagine who would or could retain an employee under such conditions. For this reason, and all those listed above, I request the reinstatement of my long term disability benefits.
Attached, you will find a letter from my primary physician, Mark Hodges, M.D., outlining my condition(s), treatments, and his professional opinion regarding my current employability. Please contact him or myself if you have any questions regarding anything contained in this letter.
I hope you can understand why I felt the need to write this letter in order to submit an appeal regarding the termination of my long term disability benefit. Thank you for taking the time to reconsider my position in this matter.
Sincerely,
Johnna D. Land
Last edited:
