“She’s tough, very tough,” was how the lawyer described the administrative law judge who would hear our SSA appeal. We couldn’t have drawn anyone tougher, she opined, or harder to read. Most of what she conveyed about her — a reputation for being “testy” with shifty claimants, a dislike of shirts bearing smart-ass or political slogans, an occasionally brusque demeanor — sounded fine or even laudable to me; disability claims are a serious matter and ought to be regarded as such.* The only thing that bothered me was “You have to watch your facial expressions around her.”
Later in the conversation, when asked if I had any questions, I wondered “Is it going to be a problem that my facial expressions are masked or do we need to explain it’s because of Parkinson’s? She might think I’m disengaged or angry when I’m not.”
The lawyer said not to worry, the judge would be familiar with my records, which repeatedly mentioned hypomimia. Her primary concern was anticipating what she might request in my case; the judge is known for demanding additional information beyond what’s presented at the appeal. She asked if I have, or could possibly obtain, the raw scores from my neurocognitive testing, in case the report summarizing the results wasn’t enough. “That’s the kind of request she might make.”
We showed up early and found the SSA hearing office nearly empty, with only an elderly couple ahead of us in line outside its locked doors. A security guard whose name might as well have been Paul Blart: Mall Cop let us in two at a time and asked if we had any guns, knives, or explosives. When it was my turn he pushed a small Dollar Tree plastic tub across the counter and asked me to empty my pockets of anything that might set off a metal detector, then carefully swept me with a metal-detecting wand. Crankenstein, who would remain in the lobby, signed a clipboard and took a seat.
Next I was sent to another counter a few feet away, where a desk clerk who already looked crushingly bored asked for my photo ID. Identity confirmed, I joined Crankenstein and noticed the reading material on a nearby rack: numbered hardcover Sesame Street Library volumes from the late 1970s that we’d each encountered at our pediatricians’ offices in the ’80s. Two nearby posters with photos of cellphones from the early aughts encouraged phone etiquette, a thought that’s laughable now when almost every waiting room features a person or two having a loud (and possibly inappropriate) FaceTime conversation or watching YouTube videos at a deafening volume.
The lawyer showed up a few minutes later and asked us to meet with her privately to discuss any final questions or concerns, and then it was back to the waiting room for another 10 or 15 minutes. Paul Blart and his desk-bound coworker began an animated conversation about professional wrestling that segued into a discussion of their involvement — as spectators — with regional competitions. Crankenstein raised an eyebrow while I remembered watching a couple seasons of The Dark Side of the Ring to learn more about the scandals and storylines Joe had followed as a kid and sometimes referenced. She raised her eyebrows again when they returned to another popular subject: how busy their morning had been so far. By then they’d admitted as many as six people into the lobby, one of whom we later heard sobbing, which also happened at the consultative exams.**
I’m not sure what I expected the hearing room to be like, maybe something similar to Night Court or the elegant setting of Barbra Streisand’s vulgar freakouts in Nuts, but it was more reminiscent of a Holiday Inn conference room. It had a desultory, impermanent look, with the judge seated on a platform at a long table-desk that might’ve been crafted from MDF boards. In front of her but lower down, where the rest of us symbolically belonged, was a tattooed young stenographer whose disinterest in his job was palpable; he exerted as little effort as possible to resolve the tech issues that plagued a latter part of the hearing, even though operation of the AV equipment was his responsibility, and seemed pained to interact with anyone. A few feet away, the lawyer and I took a seat at a flimsy table.
For the first several minutes of the proceedings, the judge and lawyer handled formalities. Then the lawyer, reading from her laptop screen, recited a long list of arguments at the heart of her appeal, most involving medical jargon (with references to muscles and quadrants and symptoms she didn’t always pronounce properly, such as “bradykinesia”) and citations of codes that I believe — but am not certain — corresponded to sections of the SSA’s official list of impairments. The judge asked me few, if any, questions the lawyer hadn’t forecast during our run-through: my name, date of birth, who I live with and where we live (house or apartment, owned or rented, multistory or ranch). Next came the limitation-centric queries, like whether I can hold my arms above my head and for how long I can do it.
There were no questions that struck me as unusual or “gotchas,” it all seemed pretty straightforward. Where her interrogation differed from the internist’s consultative exam was that she didn’t ask for demonstrations, just explanations, and she wasn’t more absorbed in paperwork than interaction. It’s quite possible her written decision will reveal I’d wholly misread things but I felt she paid closer attention to my records and answers than any of my previous adjudicators and examiners. At one point she mentioned “the antidepressant your PCP diagnosed and prescribed,” and in my answer I clarified it was the neurologist who did those things. She consulted her papers and asked if I was certain. “Yes,” I replied. “The neurologist treats it because she considers it a Parkinson’s symptom.” That appeared to be new information to her and she paused to jot a note.
Her Crohn’s questions yielded similar results; she hadn’t realized I’d had it since early childhood and wasn’t aware of the precise nature of my surgery or that it was a series of operations, not a single procedure. Some of this tracked with my impression of the consultative internist, which was that she wasn’t too knowledgeable about proctocolectomies or j-pouches. But more interesting than that were the notes the judge scribbled about carbidopa/levodopa, including that its efficacy waxes and wanes based on factors like intestinal absorption. As she made notations about how quickly it wears off, and how long it takes to kick in, I wondered why these appeals aren’t directly settled, in part, by medical specialists who are knowledgeable in areas where the average jurist — and consultative examiner — isn’t.
The hearing’s third and final speaker was a vocational expert who called into the courtroom to testify. Tech problems plagued the phone connection and malfunctioning loudspeaker, which troubled the judge much more than it bothered the stenographer. I’d been forewarned by the lawyer to ignore the vocational expert (V.E.), advice a lawyer friend of ours echoed, because if she offered three jobs I could perform “in the national economy,” as is customary, they would undoubtedly be hopelessly antiquated and possibly nonexistent, like soda jerk or switchboard operator.
My lawyer said she’d swat those away during her cross-examination, but the judge beat her to it. The V.E. produced three jobs, none of which I could entirely make out through the garbled, tinny, and very loud connection; one included “assembler” of something-or-other, a word so ludicrous in this context that the judge’s irritation was evident. The V.E. also provided codes for each option, which the lawyer entered into her notes, and gave an estimated number of how many of each position exists in our national economy. The smallest number was 8,000 such jobs and the largest was around 15,000, which effectively amounts to bupkis in a country as large as ours.
The judge made a minor adjustment to the hypotheticals, something like “If X impairment is moderate instead of mild and everything else remains the same as in the first example, could our hypothetical worker perform job one? Job two? Job three?” One by one, they disappeared; the V.E. said those jobs, the only she found to match the original parameters, were no longer options. Her testimony isn’t decisive, though, the judge can take it or leave it.
I still anticipate being denied, mostly due to my age. But I was relieved to have a better opportunity to be heard than what was offered at any prior stage of this process.^ Even that came with an asterisk, though, and not just because the system is inherently debasing.^^ No, the first and only time our famously taciturn judge was “testy” with me, as it were, came when I answered her earliest questions about my name and birthdate and she stopped to say “No, no, let’s redo this. You’re going to have to be much louder than that.” Later in the hourlong hearing, when she asked about speech therapy and I stated one of its goals was to strengthen my voice, I could’ve sworn there was a slightly embarrassed “Oops!” look in her eye for a split-second.
* “There goes my dream of wearing a Thelma (Harper) and Louise (Jefferson) t-shirt in a federal building,” I thought with a sigh.
** Offices such as theirs were among the pandemic’s many casualties, with in-person hearings plummeting in popularity once phone and online hearings were normalized. I’d opted for an in-person hearing because I worried about tech problems and whether I’d be able to keep track of what was happening. I couldn’t help but wonder, the longer Crankenstein and I heard Paul Blart & Friend talk, what they made of an unelected foreign-born trillionaire’s campaign to strip them of their jobs. Blart, I strongly suspected, was a Trump voter unaware of his own expendability even as he loudly gabbed about how little work he does anymore.
^ I wish there’d been an opportunity to say something like “I know this probably sounds odd if you aren’t too familiar with YOPD, but my timeline is typical. Michael J. Fox’s symptoms began at 29 or 30 and he first retired at 39. It’s really hard to live like this, not knowing from one dose of medication to the next what you’ll be capable of doing that day.” But there wasn’t; everything’s on the judge’s terms, which is just as well since anyone with a shitty enough injury or illness is already accustomed to being at someone else’s mercy.
^^ You are reduced to nothing more than your limitations, which should preferably flood your life like a tsunami if anyone’s to believe you cannot work full-time. Any hobbies you enjoy, any part-time work you might’ve looked for, whether you walk your dogs or wash your hair on a regular schedule, it’ll all be put under a microscope and possibly used against you. For some diagnoses, that might make sense, like if you claim debilitating anxiety prevents you from leaving the house but your hobbies include travel and attending concerts. For others, it’s an exercise in cruelty. Should someone with MS have to testify about wearing adult diapers due to urinary incontinence or can we just take their doctors at their word? (That’s not why my grandfather sought SSDI but it’s a reality for many MS patients.) Should Brandon have to explain his limitations or is it not obvious by looking at his limbs?