Evaluating a Claim for Diabetes Mellitus

The Social Security Administration sees many disability claimants who are afflicted with diabetes. Diabetes mellitus is a major cause of disability because it affects the entire body and is associated with a number of serious complications.

To win your diabetes claim for Social Security disability benefits, you must prove:

• Your diabetes is severe enough to meet or equal a listing; or
• Your diabetes prevents you from doing your former jobs and any other jobs that exist in sufficient numbers and that you could do considering your age, education, and experience.

Meeting or Equaling a Listing

Only the most severe cases will meet the diabetes listing. To meet the listing you must have one of the following:

• Neuropathy (nerve damage) in two extremities so severe that it disturbs your ability to move, walk, and stand.
• Acidosis (a serious disturbance in blood chemistry usually requiring hospitalization) that occurs every two months on average.
• Retinitis proliferans

Even if you don’t meet the diabetes listing, you may have a combination of impairments that together equal the severity of disability of a listing. For example, you may suffer from one or more of the complications associated with diabetes such as kidney failure, heart disease, foot ulcers, or stroke.

Proving Your Inability to Work

If your diabetes and its complications are not severe enough to meet or equal the Listings, you will need to show that they prevent you from doing past jobs and any other jobs that exist in significant numbers considering your age, education, and experience. It will be very important to get a complete description of your symptoms from your doctor and you should be prepared to testify about them in detail at your hearing. Your disability attorney can send your doctor a form to fill out or a letter requesting him or her to describe your symptoms. And you can keep a diary in which you record your daily symptoms.

Here is a checklist of the many symptoms commonly associated with diabetes that you and your doctor should consider:

Head

• headaches
• dizziness/loss of balance/falls

Vision

• retinopathy: spots
• episodic blurriness

Extremities

• neuropathy: burning pain, numbness, clumsiness, dropping things, difficulty walking
• vascular disease: leg cramping with walking

Internal

• thirst
• cardiac involvement: chest pain
• abdominal pain
• diarrhea
• frequency of urination
• bed wetting
• infections/fevers
• kidney problems

General

• chronic skin infections
• history of vascular disease
• excessive eating with weight loss
• obesity
• sensitivity to light, heat, cold
• muscle weakness
• fatigue
• general malaise
• associated psychological problems

Hypo-/Hyperglycemic Attacks

• hot flashes
• difficulty thinking/concentrating
• loss of manual dexterity
• sweating
• fast heart rate
• nausea/vomiting
• dizziness
• blurred vision
• convulsions
• insulin shock/coma
• post-attack fatigue

Assistance Available

If you have diabetes and want my evaluation of your disability claim, click here, then give me a brief description of your situation using the form to the right.

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