OT poll - what do you do for a living?

Just thought it would be interesting to see what sort of work everyone does.  Or if you are a student, what you are planning to do when you graduate.

I am on disability, have been for about eight years, but I do work on a part time basis too.  I can make up to a certain amount per month and still qualify for SSDI.  I work as a freelance writer on a limited basis, from home.  I write lots of boring articles; for instance, at the moment I am finishing up a serious of articles about health problems caused by mold in the home.  Sounds like fun, huh?

I work in health care, doing data entry inputting info from surveys we send out to patients (Patient Experience Survey) to help analyze their satisfactory level and ways to improve health care services.   I am going to start online courses to get certified in medical billing/coding.

That's funny, I am trying to do the same thing.  I am also on disability and I am going through voc rehab and I am hoping to be able to take courses in medical billing and coding.  I used to work at home doing data entry.  It is very hard to find a job in data entry and more so since so much has been outsourced to save money.

That is a great idea.  Coders often work from home.  About 1/2 of the coders at my company work from home.

I am an entomologist. I run a lab performing research on bugs...

oh wow.  bugs.  ick.

 Ive been trying to get ssd since 2007.  Im at the last stages. Ive been denied twice, had a court appearance in front of a new judge, he said no, so now were appealing.  If my appeal doesnt go thru then I dont get it. :( 

wow, that's a long time.  I know it usually takes a long time, but that's ridiculously long.  I hope you win your appeal.  I assume you have a good attorney?

 I dont know, I had to get one out of town. So, I dont know if hes any good or not.  I moved a couple times so thats why it was prolonged. I think I had to start over when I moved.  I had a good one in the other state, but I didnt care for any in my town. And then by the time I found out about going to court, I could only find one atty to take my case. 

Do you know why you got turned down?  Or did they just say something vague like you are not too disabled to work?

I'll tell you a couple things an attorney told me when I was applying.  I called this attorney just to ask if I should hire an attorney to apply and he said no, there would be nothing for him to do really with the initial application and that I didn't need to hire him unless I had to appeal.  But he gave me some free advice and I think that's at least part of why I got approved right away.

One thing he told me is that while Social Security asks you to sign a consent form so they can request your medical records, they typically only request your most recent records.  But there is a big difference in someone that's been hospitalized one time for depression and someone that's been hospitalized more than a dozen times.  So he told me I should request all the records myself and send those to Social Security.  They are required to consider all of the information you send them.

You can also have people that know you well write letters describing how your disability affects you.  I had a former roommate write a letter and the HR director at the last place I'd worked wrote a letter, also.

Finally, you can write a letter yourself.  Basically what I did was look up the criteria they use to decide if you are disabled (it's on their website, the critieria for just about any condition you could think of) and write a letter in which I clearly explained how I met that criteria.