Obtaining
Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is a difficult and complex process. Two out of every three applicants initially are denied. Donna Whittler had been diagnosed with multiple ailments and unable to work when she was denied two times. She shares her story here.
Overwhelmed at first by her mounting ailments, and then by misguided medical advice and an intractable benefits system, she reached out to Allsup.
‘They Came Through’
Chesapeake, Virginia—Quitting work was the last thing Donna Whittler thought about. After all, she’d been on the job one place or another since high school.
“I started as a cashier working in the same grocery store as my mom, and next thing I knew, I was running the store,” said Mrs. Whittler, now 60. She stayed with the food business for years, mostly in retail management. She dealt frequently with theft, burglaries and bad checks and often went to court to describe store losses.
Along the way she married, and with husband, Gerald, raised three children. The kids have grown and gone, and now Mrs. Whittler boasts of 11 grandchildren scattered across three states. Travel to visit her far-flung family is something she got used to and refused to give up, even when physical ailments ganged up on her, beginning in 1990 when she worked the “front end” of a super market.
“I fell and hurt my back and leg,” Mrs. Whittler said. “I kept working until my leg puffed up one day with arthritis.” She accepted a desk job at a credit union that didn’t much help and may have led to her next health challenge, in 1993.
“I got up one morning and couldn’t walk,” she said. Hospital physicians found 95-percent blockage in her aorta. “They went in there and thought they had everything cleared out.” She did OK until 1999, when she flat-lined during a routine doctor’s appointment. “My electrolytes didn’t fire,” she explained. As a result, she was fitted with a pacemaker. Troubles over? Not quite.
Next up were stents in her renal arteries and the discovery that she suffered from coronary artery disease. Meanwhile, she had her right knee replaced. Arthritic pain continued for more than two years, however, and she desperately wanted relief. She was loaded on narcotics, but miserable.
In 2004, a rheumatologist recommended she visit the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. There, she learned the pain wouldn’t go away, but she could deal with it more effectively. “They took me off the narcotics and put me in a water exercise program.” Bingo. The clinic also tried acupuncture, and this, too, had a positive effect and continues to help. Her backyard pool became a refuge where Mr. Whittler helps his wife work her limbs and muscles and soothe the pain.
Through all her health issues, Mrs. Whittler kept a positive attitude and sense of humor. She believes this helped her to cope and suffer less.
By the mid-1990s, she had left the grocery business and worked as an operations manager for a federal credit union. Around 2006, she began experiencing severe twitching and restlessness in her right leg.
“I’d be sitting in meetings and it would just start jerking,” she said. “I could not sit still.” So she would joke about how the “boring meeting” was making her sleepy, get up and walk around. What she couldn’t hide, however, was the complete deterioration of cartilage in her right foot. It demanded more surgery. “No more,” she realized, and quit work for good in February 2006.
With mounting medical bills and no end in sight, Mrs. Whittler needed financial help beyond her health insurance policy. Her insurer suggested that she apply for
Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits and recommended an advocate—a company named Allsup.
Since 1984, Belleville, Ill.,-based Allsup has helped more than 120,000 deserving clients receive nearly $10.3 billion in SSDI and Medicare benefits. Allsup employs nearly 600 specialists—many of them with decades of experience in dealing with the Social Security Administration. The company is successful about 98 percent of the time for applicants who remain in the process until a final decision is reached.
Mrs. Whittler contacted Allsup and was impressed with their knowledge and resilience. In fact, she said she may have given up out of frustration if it weren’t for the constant encouragement and motivation she got from everyone at Allsup.
“I was denied twice by Social Security,” she said. “Each time Allsup told me to be patient and not lose hope. It’s degrading to be denied. I never wanted anything for nothing. I felt abandoned, but Allsup helped me through it. They believed me and that my pain was real, not imagined.”
After her second denial, Mrs. Whittler was scheduled for a hearing before an administrative law judge. About the same time, the cartilage in her right foot had finally given out and she underwent surgery. For her day in court, she entered in a wheelchair, a senior Allsup representative at her side.
The hearing went well. About a month later—Jan. 28, 2008—Mrs. Whittler was awarded
SSDI benefits. Her advice to others in situations like hers:
“Keep asking questions, and make your doctors believe in you. Don’t give up. Surround yourself with supportive people. And keep a positive attitude.
“Allsup was great,” she said. “I would recommend them to anybody in my predicament. They came through.”