I finally got a notice for a hearing in front of an administrative law judge to decide my Social Security claim: July 29th.
For those of you playing along, I originally filed for Social Security in the spring of 2006. At the time I did it because the long term disability policy required it – I thought that I would recover too quickly for it to matter. Yeah, well, anyway.
After that there was a denial, a review, a denial, an appeal, a denial, and so forth. Somewhere in there I got myself a lawyer so he could worry about the details and I tried to put it out of my mind so I could stop reiterating how bad I had been and still was and concentrate on moving forward and getting better.
The last step, more or less, is the hearing by an administrative law judge, which will probably be the first time anyone actually looks at my medical records. If I read the notice correctly, I can still appeal this decision, but that would be it unless I want to start the process all over again and file a new claim and the clock starts all over again.
So, I am trying to not worry about this especially since there isn’t anything more to be done once I make sure that everyone has all the paperwork they need.
When I filed the request for a hearing in late November 2007, my lawyer told me that the wait would be about 18 months and he was right. Start to finish it will be 3½ years. It's taken so long that now that it's almost here it took me by surprise.
2 comments:
You will likely need a U-haul to get your medical records to court. I assume that's a taxable deduction?
Oh, wait. We don't want to bring the IRS into this now, do we?
Heaven forbid. I don't need another government agency in on this.
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