I am receiving disability benefits for IC. I was denied the first time and had to go through the appeals process. So I got a disability attorney who did it on contingency. Once you get your letter denying your claim, you have 60 days to file the appeal. Most folks who file are denied when they apply the first time. From the time I appealed until I got my hearing, it was about 2 years or so. Once I got my hearing, it was only a few months or so for them to give me their ruling. But literally the day after I got my ruling, I got a call from someone at the the local Social Security office, and they asked me to come in to get things going so that they could pay me and get me on insurance. It took them about 6 weeks to get me on Medicare, but in the meantime the state put me on Medicaid immediately which was awesome because my state is really stingy with that and wouldn’t provide me with that when I needed it during the whole time that I was waiting for the disability process. So for over 2 years I went without insurance or a way to have it. I was lucky to have friends who worked in healthcare who knew about a charity care program that I could sign up for to see a doctor to get prescriptions, and my husband worked his ass off to get me pain medication.

I also have a number of other health conditions that I just had to ignore during that whole time including type 2 diabetes. I couldn’t afford to do anything about them whatsoever.