Most newbies here won't recognize her, but of course, all of the founding members not only know her, but have a special place in their heart for her, and know that she has had a particularly tough time with MC, after achieving remission, and weaning off Asacol a time or two, and then having a relapse and discovering that it was no longer effective for her, and then not being able to consistently control her symptoms with Entocort.
Her symptoms became so bad last year, that she had to take a break from work, but when the short-term disability period expired, she was still unable to return to work, so she filed for long-term disability last October. She has been really stressed over the fact that a ruling seemed to be taking forever, (which, of course, made her symptoms worse), but I just found out that her claim was finally approved, so now, hopefully, a little sunshine will be coming back into her life, and some of the stress will be fading away.
The part that some of us may find of interest, is the fact that the disability ruling was granted on the basis of her colitis, alone, and not for stress and/or chronic pain, (even though they were/are also a problem). So, even though many/most GI docs write MC off as "a little diarrhea, with a benign course", obviously it is a debilitating disease, just as we have always maintained. If it were not a debilitating disease, no insurance company in the world would approve a claim of that type.
Peggy gave me permission to post this to the board, of course, and I hope that some of us, who find it extremely difficult to go to work each day, because of overwhelming symptoms, may be able to benefit from this experience. And most of all, I hope that Peggy's quality of life will improve a lot, now what a huge load of stress has been lifted from her shoulders. Kudos to whoever approved her claim.
Love,
Tex
