On-Line Version of From Where I Sit: Blog 3. Legal Advice on Social Security Disability

As promised [although why it took me so long is a subject for another time since I am not only late and tired but also disabled--the reality of disability is that when pressed I can always use it as an excuse]:

To send your questions to Peter Pinnola about Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) email Peter at pinnola@comcast.net

Your questions and answers (not your name, but your initials and location [unless you say “complete anonymity”]) will appear right here at this blog spot.

Peter graduated from Harvard and went to the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has been practicing Social Security disability law for over 25 years and has been admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of PA, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Why Peter has agreed to blog with me is anyone’s guess, but the general idea is that Peter provides the facts and I chime in from time to time telling you what it feels like to be disabled and be paid for it and how hard it is to get off the dole (or, in the case of SSDI insurance) and how the program to get off actually works as opposed to how it is supposed to work.

Peter’s skill is in making sure people with disabilities get the best benefits for which they are entitled.My shrill thesis is that it should be easier for people who are “permanently disabled” to get meaningful, well-paid work. I will be sure to make clear who is saying what.

Your comments are appreciated.

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Bill

I first read your comment in an overpriced motel room in Altoona and wanted to respond immediately. Immediately is not something I do easily. The moon must be in Virgo. Zeus must nod in my direction. The cards-dice-fortune-itself must favor me as rarely before. Everything must be working right on a number of levels. [I remain superstitious about things I do not believe much as I do not believe in Zeus nodding or astrological signs mattering.]

For me reality has changed. My natural spontaneity being followed by immediate action—the reality of who I was before my disability—is no longer real. Reality is no longer real; nothing has taken the place of that old reality except the hope (hard to conceptualize) that I will eventually achieve and that hope is both the strength and limitation of disability.

So, I have waited a week to respond while waiting for my stamina to reappear, stamina that stayed with me most of Monday (April 5^th when you posted your comment) as I met with my new boss Joe Fagnani, head of the Blair/Clearfield County Association for the Blind based in an old fire house in downtown Altoona. Joe is formerly a senior systems analyst for ITT who moved to Altoona for romance and for the opportunity to find jobs and provide services to the 6,700 people in Blair and Clearfield Counties who also cannot see.  My job is to help Joe in central Pennsylvania where depression oozes off the payment and “perfectly able” people cannot find jobs and have given up looking.

For lunch I met with Bob Laverick, who is a disabled veteran from the Iraq war, a dynamic counselor at the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (OVR) whose belief in his own seemingly-patented brand of positive thinking is essential for his self-appointed role of encourager to individuals with disabilities. The OVR office is located in downtown Altoona, down the street from the “traditional” so my guidebook says, Texas Chili Hot Dog parlor.

What is authentically traditional about Altoona is the railroad bridge and depot a short distance from the hot dog parlor. Home of the now lost riches of Pennsylvania, Altoona was once famous for 19^th century engineering marvels of spectacular proportions—including, but not limited to leveling portions of the Alleghany Mountains, visible everywhere, so the Pennsylvania Railroad could go from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, building an economy vast in the riches of coal and steel, a critical part of the incredible 19^th Century expanse that linked America by rail from sea to shining sea.

I realize that my answer to your question about rheumatoid arthritis and the fear of its return is slow and meandering. But as long as I get there, my Voices webmaster counsels me, then it is all right to take my time because the rules governing blogging are more relaxed than the tighter constraints of the printed word.

You asked about my disability experience. It can be summarized in two words cancer and radiation. The radiation killed the cancer, but it also permanently damaged my spine confining me to a battery-powered wheel chair (also my right arm does not work well as a result of a fall when I thought I could walk) and robbing me of the dependable stamina employers look for when they hire people who must punch a clock. [Details of my wheel chair and my disabilities (there are several of them) are in the columns I have been producing monthly for Voices and which I have collected at the following site: http://disabilitiesjoelsolkoffblogs.blogspot.com/]

The academics who govern disability education distinguish between hidden disabilities, such as yours, Bill, and mine (which cannot be hidden since a power chair takes up so much room and weight the airlines will not let me fly out of State College). The bureaucratic differences between overt and covert disabilities may be a subject for another time, but their commonality is based in such simple words as fear and limitation.

Will the pain in my right arm come back stronger, so strong I cannot endure it? Will the limitation of my lost stamina reach the point where my ability to answer your question moves from delay to emptiness?

These are the kind of questions we share in common—questions that have no clear answers because, to quote Doris Day, “What will be will be.” In the interim, I prefer to concentrate on the huge murals in downtown Altoona that lift the spirit and on enthusiasm at Virginia Tech that causes inventors to build automobiles for people who are blind http://www.vt.edu/spotlight/innovation/2009-07-27-drivers/2009-07-27-drivers.html