Fighting for Disability

A few years ago I went through the fight for disability with my uncle. It was the longest four and half years of my life. He was clearly disabled but the first time he applied he got denied. The second time he got denied, the third time and so on. I wanted to pull my hair out. Every time we jumped through every single hoop they asked us to and still he couldn’t approved.

We would go to doctors that we were sent to only for the doctor to have walk across the floor and say he wasn’t disabled. I’m not kidding. We went to one doctor who did that and we were finally based on his heart condition. I’m not sure what all of that was about but there you go. It was maybe the third or fourth time that I decided we were going to do something different. I got him a  lawyer like those at hamiltonlawyers.com who specialize in this sort of thing. The paralegal that we worked with helped in so many ways. She shared information that I didn’t know about and told us what we needed to get.

For example she told me all of the paperwork that I could get and send to the quicker than if they filed paperwork for it. It would help move things along. She said she could take all the time doing all of that and bill us the hours or we could send it and would only be hit with the flat fee. Now, I don’t know if other offices do that or not but she did and it was helpful. It helped to know what we really needed out of the mountain of papers I had.

Like I said my uncle was filing because of his heart condition that meant he could no longer work. He was and still is on a ton of medicines. Many of which we can’t get at our local pharmacy here because they cost too much. It’s cheaper to go to a larger pharmacy for them. Of course at the time we were paying full price for them all. Having disability support services sydney helped us win his disability case and get him Medicare. 

The day of his court case for his disability I remember being so nervous. I couldn’t go in with him but his lawyer was in there. I remember sitting in the car (because the court office was this little place where the judge comes in like once a month) having to go potty so bad. I didn’t want to leave to go because I was afraid I would miss something. When my uncle came out he was shaking hands with his lawyer and I will like “Well….Well?” Finally he said he had won. I could not have been more thrilled. 

I never knew that the whole process was as completed as it was and it is a process I pray I never have to go through again. Ma doesn’t get disability, she gets survivors benefits so that helps. Plus this year she will be 65 so there won’t be any sort of fight for her pay. If you have never had to fight for this consider yourself lucky. If you are fighting, seek professional help. You would be surprised how much having someone on your side who knows what they are doing will help. Don’t make the mistake I did and wait for ever to do it. I thought that it was just paperwork and I could fill that out as easily as anyone else.