zoea.m. - congratulations on getting an early hearing, let's hope that wait times really are improving! How long did you wait in each of the other stages?
I think I originally filed for disability in the fall of 2008 and it was rejected within a few months. I did the appeal and another few months later, it was denied again. I filed for the hearing stage and received the notice of a hearing
right before Christmas of 2010 stating that it would be 24 months before my hearing and to get a lawyer, and that most of the action would take place in the 6 months before the hearing. The lawyer told me that it could be as little as 18 months, but generally adhered to the 24-month timeline. Imagine my surprise (because I needed a lot of work gathering evidence since my PCP is an ARNP, not an MD, and I'd agreed to seek out an MD with knowledge of ME/CFS) and had about 7 specialists yet to see, when I got the notice in December 2010 that my hearing was on Feb. 1st, 2011! My lawyer dropped the case, my PCP got right into getting records ready and writing a narrative, but it was a bit of a mess because I couldn't get the info I'd been planning and, with the holidays, no one had time to put the case together really... I was lucky to find a lawyer 3 wks before the hearing who took over all of the record stuff and everything and pounded the case out in that amount of time. I worked with my PCP to get the letter done within 5 days of the hearing and, after much ado, was too sick to show at the hearing, was going to testify by phone, but the judge and my lawyer spoke a few times and, right before I was supposed to testify, I got a call that the judge had approved my case and it was done and disability would be established back to the time of 2008 (when I applied) and the only way to try to go back further would be to testify/or set another court date, and that disability would only go back so far, so I took that deal. Since then, I've yet to hear anything (I think my lawyer said 60 days to get the paperwork from the judge and then SSD/SSDI (don't know yet), but it's just as well because it's a lot to process and getting buried under paperwork after the months of stress before the hearing would have been too much. My PCP has warned me to "not sign anything or agree to anything" immediately and that SSD will offer many different options and people can walk into mistakes, so to take my time.
I realize this is way more info than you asked for, but it all just hits me like a wave when I think about it! And, FWIW, I had no specific ME/CFS workup or testing; I had only just (in 2010) had a major workup with blood cultures and looking for lymphoma, celiac, lupus, primary immune deficiency, etc. with little abnormalities, but some significant ones. My ME/CFS doc had suggested the MTHFR gene test in the fall of 2010, (he said that the majority of his substantial patient number had tested positive) and I suspect that might have been helpful in my test. Mostly, from what I understand about my case, the narrative really was the most important piece, and it was basically a 3-year/ 3-page patient history with specific objective findings that were consistent over the years and that also mentioned my attempts at work and graduate schooling and how a crash followed quickly each time.
:victory:
