You may be able to get Social Security disability benefits if you’ve been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease. My name is Kaitlin Wildoner, and I’m an attorney that helps individuals obtain their Social Security Disability Insurance, (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits as quickly as possible so they can focus on getting better. Today we’re going to talk about how you might be able to obtain Social Security disability benefits if you’ve been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease.
Disability for Degenerative Disc Disease
First, degenerative disc disease is one of the most common impairments for which Social Security receives applications for disability benefits. Therefore, they do have a listing in their Blue Book, it is currently Listing 1.15, known as Disorders of the Skeletal Spine Resulting in a Compromise of Nerves. In order to meet that listing, you have to have radicular distribution of pain, paresthesia, or muscle fatigue. You must also have muscle weakness and signs of nerve root irritation, tension, or compression, consistent with the compromise of the affected nerve root and either sensory changes that are evidenced by decreased sensation or sensory nerve deficit or decreased deep tendon reflexes. You must also have imaging that shows a compromise of a nerve root in your cervical or lumbosacral spine, and finally, to meet the listing, you have to have physical limitations that have already lasted or are expected to last at least twelve months.
In addition to those physical limitations, you will need medical documentation of one of the following:
- The need for a walker, bilateral canes, bilateral crutches, or a wheel and seated mobility device that involves the use of both of your hands
- Medical documentation of an inability to use your upper extremity to start, sustain, and complete fine and gross motor movements, plus a documented need for a one-handed hand-held assistive device
- Medical documentation of an inability to use both of your upper extremities such that you cannot start, sustain, or finish fine and gross motor movements.
If you don’t meet the listing for degenerative disc disease, all is not lost. Social Security will then look to your residual functional capacity, they will review your medical records to determine what types of physical and mental activities you can engage in, and they will create an RFC (residual functional capacity) based on that information. SSA will then take that RFC and first evaluate whether you can return to any of your past work that you have performed in the last 15 years. If not, then they will look and see if there are any jobs that exist in the national economy based on your RFC, your age, your education, and any skills you may have obtained from your past work to see if there are other jobs that exist that you could do.
Help with a Degenerative Disc Disease Social Security Case
If you are disabled and unable to work, click the scheduling link below or call us directly for a free telephone consultation, so we can see what we can do to help you.
