He doesn't know whether his neighbor needs disability or not, he's just guessing. MS symptoms are really variable. The fact that he has a few good days doesn't mean he can hold down a steady job.
That's been our experience with my uncle who has MS.
It started as periodic attacks in his late 30s, where for anywhere from a day at a time, to about a week at a time, he'd have significant difficulty getting out of bed and moving around (and definitely couldn't drive). But then he could go for weeks at a time being totally fine; usually about 4-6 weeks, and in one case a full 6 months. This already started making it hard to keep employment, though, since employers tend not to like random unscheduled absences that are likely to continue indefinitely into the future (even if they understand the reason). Fortunately, he was a lawyer, which is an area where at the time it was relatively easy to find flexible part-time work. That worked ok for a number of years. Once the attacks got more frequent though, even this no longer worked out. Also he was no longer able to maintain a driver's license. So by his mid-40s he went on disability, even though he was still ok probably 50% of the time. He would definitely have preferred to keep working in some capacity if it were possible, because it gave him something to do, and even his previous part-time job paid more than the $700/mo disability gave. By his late 40s he definitely couldn't work in any capacity (started having mental issues in addition to physical ones, and full-time physical ones), but there's a few years there where it seemed unfortunate that we don't have a way to better accommodate people who are somewhat but not really fully able to work.
mjn|10 years ago
It started as periodic attacks in his late 30s, where for anywhere from a day at a time, to about a week at a time, he'd have significant difficulty getting out of bed and moving around (and definitely couldn't drive). But then he could go for weeks at a time being totally fine; usually about 4-6 weeks, and in one case a full 6 months. This already started making it hard to keep employment, though, since employers tend not to like random unscheduled absences that are likely to continue indefinitely into the future (even if they understand the reason). Fortunately, he was a lawyer, which is an area where at the time it was relatively easy to find flexible part-time work. That worked ok for a number of years. Once the attacks got more frequent though, even this no longer worked out. Also he was no longer able to maintain a driver's license. So by his mid-40s he went on disability, even though he was still ok probably 50% of the time. He would definitely have preferred to keep working in some capacity if it were possible, because it gave him something to do, and even his previous part-time job paid more than the $700/mo disability gave. By his late 40s he definitely couldn't work in any capacity (started having mental issues in addition to physical ones, and full-time physical ones), but there's a few years there where it seemed unfortunate that we don't have a way to better accommodate people who are somewhat but not really fully able to work.
toomuchtodo|10 years ago