I am a 40 year old female who has worked full time since age 16. I was diagnosed with left sided temporal lobe seizures in 1992. I was on treatment for only a short time because I was fired from my job as an LPN due to tardiness (my type of seizures occur mostly during sleep and it is very difficult to wake up in the mornings, thus leading to my tardiness). My doctor was at the clinic that I had been fired from and I lost my insurance. Three Months later i found a new job but the same doctor was on my new insurance so I never went back. I worked at this second nursing position for 12 years.

About 2 years ago I noticed that my sleeping pattern had worsened, I was becoming extremely fatigued during the day, even falling asleep with clients in my office, and my short and intermediate term memory, which had never been great was rapidly declining. I started getting in trouble for forgetting to do paperwork, misplacing things, and I was late to work almost daily. I decided to quit before I was fired, the stress was tremendous.

I got on my new husbands new insurance and got to see and new neurologist who did another EEG and found that I now have seizure activity in both temporal lobes and I have started having focal seizures in both hands and sometimes my head jerks to the left. I am also seeing a Psychiatrist for severe depression and she’s leaning towards a diagnosis of bi polar. My neuro explained to me that my type of seizures have caused the memory problems and most likely the depression.

I applied for ssd in May and they sent me for a CE for an Eval of My depression and memory tests. I have no clue how I did on the memory test but I don’t feel that it was a good indicator of the type of memory loss that I have. I may remember a set of words ten minutes from now but in two days I won’t remember that there was a set of words. Do I have any chance of winning my case?

Jonathan Ginsberg responds:  Lynn, based on what you write, I think you have a strong argument to win your disability case.  The first place I would look is the SSA "bluebook" which contains the SSD listings.  The listing relating to seizures is Listing 11.  I would print this out, take it to your doctor and ask him if you meet any of these listing definitions.  It may be that your seizure activity is enough to support a claim for disability.

At the same time, I would look at the listing for depression – and ask your psychiatrist if you meet the criteria there.  Here, too your condition may be listing level.

If you are not at listing level for either the seizures or the depression, I think a good argument could be made that your functional capacity for work has been so diminished that you would not be able to perform any kind of work.  Reember, for SSDI purposes, your impairments must preclude all work, not just your past work as a nurse.  If this was my case, I would take my standard depression/mental health functional capacity form and modify it to include limitations arising from a seizure disorder.

Assuming that your doctor would be able to identify reliability limitations (i.e., too much missed time from work, erratic performance schedules, poor memory), you should have a good chance at winning.

If you need legal assistance, I have set up a disability lawyer referral service for your use.  Please write me back and let me know how things turn out.

[tags] seizures and social security disability, depression and social security disability, disability lawyer referral, meeitng a listing [/tags]