Understanding Your Disability: ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease

Imagine not being able to control the muscles in your arms and legs, or being able to stop them from twitching. This is an early symptom of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

ALS is so serious a disease that it has been given special consideration by the Social Security Association. But Lou Gehrig’s patients can only take advantage of those benefits if they know about them.

Understanding Lou Gehrig’s Disease

Lou Gehrig’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease. It affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and interferes with and eventually kills off the motor neurons that allow the brain to control the muscles.

An ALS patient may have trouble controlling his or her arms or legs, may have limited fine motor control, or have problems with speech. Lou Gehrig’s Disease is a gradual onset disease, which means the symptoms get worse and spread over time. In later stages, ALS patients may have trouble swallowing and breathing, and often become paralyzed.

This gradual loss of motor control can make working incredibly frustrating for Lou Gehrig’s patients. Tasks that once were well within their abilities will slowly become more difficult, until eventually they are unable to do their jobs at all. In the later stages of ALS, there is simply no job that a patient can do to support himself or herself.

ALS and Social Security Disability

The severity of Lou Gehrig’s disease and its disabling effects are why the Social Security Administration has named ALS on it’s “Listing of Impairments.” That means that if the applicant meets certain criteria, he or she will be automatically eligible for disability benefits.

The application should also be fast-tracked under the Compassionate Allowances program, and could be decided within a couple of weeks if everything is filed correctly. However, because of a waiting period built in to the law, ALS patients cannot collect social security disability benefits until 5 months after the onset of their disability. There is no such waiting period in SSI, which applies in low-income cases.

The Importance of a Diagnosis

The challenge of getting an SSDI award in Lou Gehrig’s disease cases isn’t the illness, it is the diagnosis. ALS is a difficult disease to diagnose. It often requires a clinical examination and a series of diagnostic tests, which gradually rule out other diseases. But in order to receive special consideration based on the patient’s disease, his or her medical records must explicitly state a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. That is why it is important for ALS patients to get a second opinion and get that all-important diagnosis.

A diagnosis of ALS is a tragic event since the disease is terminal. Don’t let your loved one’s final years be consumed with complicated administrative appeals. If you or someone you know has received a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease, contact social security attorney William Crawforth right away to make sure your social security disability application gets filed right the first time.