My Support Forums - View Single Post - SSDI Review--I'm already on SSDI--assigned to meet a Pdoc

imapatient · Mar 05, 2010, 05:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deliquesce

how did it go, impy? *poke*

It was weird.

He didn't seem to know anything about me, like he hadn't read any reports supplied by my multiple T's and pdoc or what I had submitted. I'm pretty sure he didn't know anything coming into it.

He said there was half an hour for it, and then I could take some time at the end if there was stuff I wanted to bring up or ask questions.

He was not very people-friendly, but I do believe he was friendly overall; a good-hearted person. Very cut and dried; read from a prepared list of questions. Assembly-line .The questions were very standard and very "square" in that they didn't lend themselves to dealing with material that was somewhat related but not exactly on topic. But I took advantage when possible of having my say and not letting what he heard be defined by overly simplistic, narrow questions.

I started off needing to make the general case for "so what are the problems you have that prevent you from working?" Then came the narrow, very concrete questions.

There's a problem that I've always had with being evaluated by new people--going back to my first T visit 25 years ago--of coming across too well. My main T suggested that I bring it up right away for this evaluation to make this pdoc aware of the dynamic. I couldn't get to it right away given the flow, and brought it up later when I had to. Basically I have test scores that are way off the charts--99.999 percentile. Added to that I'm considered extremely articulate, particularly about complex material and concepts. So I end up sounding very on top of things, together, aware of everything going on inside and outside me, and explain myself in extremely impressive ways. I've had problems with T's not taking me/my problems seriously--at early meetings--because I seem so very highly functioning and able communication-wise, self-analysis/awareness, super ability to understand and explain. This pdoc gave me that rap about how good a job I did at explaining things, etc. that it would work against me in an assessment of my functioning. The point with my therapist and others is that they've come to see that in some I am extremely highly functioning mentally, but still unable to function--or I function extremely poorly--in other way.

So after this guy gave me that, I gave the explanation that my T suggested I make. After talking about it a bit he seemed to understand. He used the metaphor that I might look like a brand new, shiny, souped-up, top of the line Cadillac but only have a 1-cylinder engine working inside, all appearances aside. So I think he got it.

On that theme, it really drove me crazy with these little word, letter, number tasks they ask. One was to ask who the current President is, I said Obama, the he asked "and who was P before him?" and I said George W. Bush, before? Clinton, before, George Herbert Walker Bush, before that? Reagan. He raised his eyebrows like he was super-impressed, like questioning how difficult things could be for me. But I've been a political junkie my whole--before school even, my family was political, all 4 kids in my family were polisci majors, and I had completed 3 years of PhD work in political science at an Ivy League school when I fell apart. It's not a big deal at all to remember all the presidents from the past 30 years for me--it's to be expected with my background. I could probably go all the way back and miss only a few.

Then there were some number things. I think I got them all right. He seemed impressed. They were child's play for me. I have that super high math aptitude and could have gone to college on a math scholarship. I have a particular math accomplishment that I won't get into but that is genius-level quality. And I also worked in accounting/finance for many years where I walked around juggling numbers and formulae in my head all my waking hours. I have a general thing for counting things--OCD--so I'm also categorizing and organizing things in my head in numerical terms always. Numbers are easier for me than words even.

So the idea that my good performance on those could hurt my chances for demonstrating disability due to mental illness enrages me.

There must be outliers for those sorts of tests at the level of sophistication they use, but I was given no indication that they try to evaluate performance in a more sophisticated way than a one-size-fits-all.

Another problem is that I used a word--given to me by a T as a way to categorize some of my problems with trying to do productive work, the whole process of--"avolitional." The examining pdoc didn't know the word--it's common for the profession. Belittled it as "well that's a big word" and after I explained it attached a definition to it that's at odds with the meaning and that is denigrating in what it says about someone labeled with it. I didn't want to get into an argument with him so I let it go. My two individual T’s that I’ve told this about can’t believe he didn’t know the word or concept (by that word at least).

So 30 minutes of his thing and then 10 minutes of my follow-up to try and make sure certain things were understood? I don't have faith that he knows me well enough from that time to make a meaningful assessment. It was very assembly line. But, I do feel that in the end he expressed some sympathy and degree of understanding how much I suffer. He wrote a report that SSDI will use. From there, I don’t know what’s next.

Can't say I feel enlightened about where it's at or that I have faith in the process.