Please, I'm grateful you responded and I'm the responding kind. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to.

Hmm, good/bad...? I don't know, suppose it depends on your perspective. I think it means that they are not holding their breath on getting me employed but are willing to give it the good ol college try.

Yes.

Because of a plethora of disabling conditions both physical and mental.

Absolutely.

Well, therein lies the problem. I should qualify for disability based solely on physical disabilities but I ran into a snag. I'm not sure if there's a short version but here's my best attempt at that:

I have a rare, auto-immune disease called myasthenia gravis (along with a host of other conditions that are, in most cases, secondary to the MG). MG is Latin for 'grave muscle weakness' and to put that into perspective, most people die from this because they get so weak that their pulmonary system doesn't have the strength to work and they stop breathing. Our bodies via our nerves produce acetylcholine (think 'muscle gas') and send it to our muscles. My body attacks and destroys the acetylcholine before it makes it to my muscles. A very little bit sneaks through. When I am sleeping, because I am using very little muscle to do so, the acetylcholine builds up and I wake up with as much as I'm going to have all day.

Now let's say I start walking. Eventually I run out of muscle gas in my legs. If I push on, let's say because I am in the middle of the street and a car is coming, my legs will steal muscle gas from any other muscle group in the body - and it does so indiscriminately. Today it is my back muscles and they get very weak and sore, tomorrow it is my pulmonary system and I stop breathing. So, the lesson is, don't push yourself.

There is one treatment available but it doesn't work for a small majority (60%). I fall into that category. My neurologist put me on the drug and tried to titrate me up to a therapeutic dose but I overdosed before I got there and ended up in the hospital. They discontinued it, put me on steroids for two weeks and tried again. Same result and so it was discontinued.

During my hearing for disability, the judge had my medical records from my neurologist who said, and I'm paraphrasing, 'we discontinued the medication because his myasthenia gravis was so well managed that he didn't need it any longer'. Clearly that was wrong. So, I was denied, went to my neurologists office and asked them to review and correct my medical records to reflect my condition accurately. Apparently, he is not to be questioned and I was fired as a patient. Incidentally, I have always had a good report with doctors, this was a unique interaction.

My primary care physician has since tried to get me referrals to other neurologists in the area but each of them, after reviewing my records, have decided that this is too rare and outside the scope of their expertise and I need to be referred to a specialist too far away for me to travel to. I have neither the strength or financial resources to get there. So..., I am unable to get a second opinion or even have the last one corrected. In my favor, as far as disability is concerned, I've had three more heart attacks since the last hearing in Sept. 2016 and they have found a couple of other physical issues that weren't taken into account. I don't know if that'll be sufficient though.

Well, no. I'm going to let them make that determination. However, that last heart attack I had at work...I started that morning, it was my first day on the job and came after the judge denied me for disability. It was a sedentary job, nothing physical about it.