The subjective nature of pain and the disability case
Former disability examiner, Timothy Moore, writes about his experiences with lower back pain and the Social Security Disability Process:
About one week ago to the day, I injured my lower back. And though I am now fully on the road to recovery, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be saddled with nagging lumbar back pain indefinitely …
… light jobs would be difficult because handling any amount of weight, let alone, say, 20 pounds, would aggravate a back problem. I rediscovered this reality yesterday as I, in a limited fashion, tried to help my wife with groceries. The simple weight of a gallon jug of milk was enough to make me wince. How about a sedentary job? Well, the problem with sedentary jobs has to do with…being sedentary.
As many claimants with chronic lower back pain will attest, being in a seated position can become very uncomfortable even after a few minutes. But even “sedentary jobs” are not entirely sedentary. Most sedentary work still involves having to get up and down from a seated position dozens of times during the course of a day. And this can obviously present a problem for someone with lower lumbar pain. …
Disability examiners, their supervisors, and the medical consultants with whom disability examiners work all too often slap decisions on cases without allowing claimants reasonable consideration with respect to their pain.
Tim goes on to discuss why disability examiners do not give reasonable considerations to pain. Read the entire article here.
