Obtaining Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) can be a time-consuming and stressful experience. Two out of every three applicants initially are denied. Burdened with fibromyalgia, depression, and a failed marriage, Kathy Thomas believed that things could not get worse. But they did. After two denials for SSDI benefits, Mrs. Thomas did her research and found Allsup on the Internet. Read about the fantastic results.

 

 

 

 

Fond du Lac, Wisconsin ─ She’d worked since she was 15. She planned on working until retirement age. But as the saying goes, life is what happens while you’re making plans. Kathy Thomas’s life is no exception.

 

“About 20 years ago, I got really, really sick for no reason,” Mrs. Thomas, 51, said. She had flu-like symptoms ─ body aches, fever, light-headedness, fatigue. “I couldn’t stay awake. My husband would have to come pick me up at work. I didn’t know what was wrong.”

 

Doctors were dismissive. They suggested she should see a psychiatrist. She cried a lot. “I’m going to die and nobody will know why,” she feared. But then a friend told her about a seminar on chronic fatigue. There, she found people with the same symptoms. She learned that some doctors had embraced patients with her condition.

 

“I finally found a doctor who diagnosed me with fibromyalgia,” she said. She also saw a psychiatrist and soon began feeling better. She learned to cope with the ups and downs of fibromyalgia. “I’d sometimes have a bad day or two, sometimes two or three weeks where I just felt lousy, but I always bounced back.”

 

Burdening her further was a failing marriage and the realization she alone was responsible for her daughter, Erin, who is autistic. All the while, she worked for a Pennsylvania veterinarian and later founded an animal rescue group.

 

When the veterinarian died eight years ago, Mrs. Thomas packed up and moved, settling in central Wisconsin. Besides Erin, now 21 and “very high-functioning,” she brought along cats and dogs she’d rescued but was unable to place in other homes. She sought similar work in Wisconsin, but found too many roadblocks. Instead, she took classes to become a certified nursing assistant and began caring for nursing home residents. But her health worsened.

 

“Probably the last five years were just unbearable,” she said. “My ankles swelled up really bad. I ended up at a rheumatologist. He found the sarcoidosis.” When swollen by the inflammatory disease, her lymph nodes press against her lungs. “When they get bad, I can tell,” she said. “I just will be out of breath.” The condition leads to panic attacks. There seemed to be no end.

 

The dark clouds over her weighed Mrs. Thomas down and she drifted in and out of depression. Her manager suggested she apply for family medical leave. But this would disrupt her career progression, and she didn’t want to face any more setbacks. She struggled on, gradually forced to reduce her shifts until she was working only one weekend a month.

 

“I felt awful just knowing I had to go to work,” she said. “Finally, I just quit.” 

 

Soon after her final day of work in July 2006, Mrs. Thomas applied for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits. She was rejected six months later. The Social Security Administration (SSA) denies 65 percent of initial applications nationwide. She called lawyers from an ad she saw on television. They suggested she appeal. The process this time was longer, and the SSA sent her to a doctor for evaluation, who “really did nothing. He looked at my eyes, mouth and ears ─ that was about it. I thought this was good, maybe. Not long after, I got another denial.”

 

As determined as she had been in raising her daughter and protecting animals, she decided to challenge her denial of benefits. She researched on the Internet and found Allsup.

 

Allsup is a nationwide provider of Social Security disability, Medicare and workers’ compensation services for individuals, employers and insurance carriers. Founded in 1984, Allsup employs more than 600 professionals who deliver specialized services supporting people with disabilities and seniors so they may lead lives that are as financially secure and as healthy as possible.

 

“I gave them my information, and they said they’d get back to me if they thought I had a case,” Mrs. Thomas said. “They got back to me.” Allsup accepted Mrs. Thomas as a customer in February 2007, and prepared her case for a hearing before an administrative law judge. Allsup braced her for a long wait, however. In 2009, there was a nationwide backlog of 768,000 cases awaiting a hearing.

 

As she awaited a court date, she leaned on her mom and step dad for financial support and also got help from the Salvation Army. Allsup updated her regularly. “They kept me informed. Given my physical and mental state ─ the stress of the financial difficulties and all the paperwork ─ I think I would have given up. Allsup did that for me.”

 

Mrs. Thomas finally went to court in Oshkosh, Wis., in April 2009. A California-based judge heard the case over a Webcam setup. An Allsup senior representative talked with her before the hearing and accompanied her. Allsup’s success rate at level three hearings is an astounding 92-plus percent.

 

“She knew my case very well and knew how the court hearing would work,” Mrs. Thomas said. It worked just fine. In June 2009, she was awarded SSDI benefits.

 

With the back pay she received from SSA, she sent her parents the money they’d loaned her. And while she still needs their help from time to time to make ends meet, she no longer suffers from a sense of helplessness.

 

“The stress of not knowing about SSDI was so hard,” she said. “Allsup took that weight off me. I am really thankful I had them.”