Do You Need Someone to Provide Support in a Difficult Time?
Fibromyalgia impacts every part of your life, leaving you feeling robbed of a happy life. Leaving you unable to work.
Here is a path toward financial relief: Social Security Disability benefits.
Benefits provide monthly checks and Medicare health coverage. They let you cover your basic expenses when you can’t work and live with a sense of independence and dignity.
But just like fibromyalgia itself, getting approved for benefits is complicated. It’s hard to explain the pain and exhaustion of fibromyalgia to other people. That includes explaining it to Social Security, which requires you to legally prove that you can’t work.
Social Security denies most people who apply for disability benefits.
But you can find someone to support you in getting the financial assistance you need: The disability lawyers at Robertson Wendt Disability.
They deal with this process full-time and know how to build a claim for a vexing condition like fibromyalgia.
Law firm leader Robertson Wendt is one of few disability attorneys in South Carolina who have board certification in disability law. That’s an additional step lawyers can take to show their dedication to helping people who can’t work because of disruptive health problems.
In Charleston, Columbia or anywhere in South Carolina, we take the time to understand your situation, help you make the strongest possible claim for disability benefits, and protect your financial independence.
Convincing Social Security that Your Fibromyalgia Qualifies for Disability Benefits
When you have fibromyalgia, you know that fibromyalgia is often misunderstood.
For a long time, Social Security didn’t recognize it as a qualifying impairment for Social Security Disability at all.
Because it was hard to define, understand and prove, they backed away.
That changed in 2012.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) issued a statement acknowledging that fibromyalgia can be serious enough to force you off work. And it offered standards for qualifying for Social Security Disability with fibromyalgia.
The standards center on proving that you have pain all over your body, and that your pain lasts for months.
To be approved for benefits, you’ll need to submit the results of physical examinations of multiple points on your body. The exam must cover the same points on each side of your body, and on your upper and lower body, such as your left and right knee, your left and right shoulder, etc.
Your doctor will need to check these spots:
- Back of your neck
- Base of your skull
- Each shoulder muscle
- Inside your knee
- Leg below your hip
- The second rib
- Side of your neck
- Shoulder blade muscle
- Upper buttock
Another challenge with a disability claim for fibromyalgia is ruling out that your pain isn’t caused by a different medical condition. You’ll need your doctor to investigate other possibilities besides fibromyalgia.
It’s also possible that you could win benefits with a different diagnosis, or a combination of fibromyalgia and other health problems.
If you can’t prove to Social Security that you have an officially qualifying impairment from a list that they keep, you can take another approach: documenting all of your symptoms and how they limit your ability to function.
Many people thinking about Social Security Disability start out wondering if they have a claim for benefits. You can have an initial conversation with our disability lawyers to help you determine your best course action—for free.
