Hi I’m Sharon Christie your nurse attorney for Social Security disability benefits. I represent a lot of clients with arthritis and frequently am asked whether arthritis can be a basis for a disability claim. So, let’s talk about that. I have clients who have rheumatoid arthritis I have other clients who have osteoarthritis. Whether their condition is going to be a basis for a disability claim depends on how severe the condition is, and how much it affects them day to day. 

So for example what I frequently see with arthritis problems people may have difficulty moving their hands. They may have trouble with fine movement. They may have very swollen and painful joints that affects your ability to pick things up. Like you might have difficulty picking a penny up off of a table or trying to open a jar. Your grip strength might be very limited because of the arthritis. 

Your hand movement might be limited, you may not be able to make a fist because your joints are so stiff. You may have trouble that affects your knees I see that a lot bad arthritis affecting somebody’s knees making it very difficult to walk. You might need a cane or a walker. You may have great difficulty getting up and down stairs you may have trouble sitting. Even with sitting you may have pain in your knees; because of the pain whether it’s in your knees or your feet your hands or any other joint that you have it can be affected by arthritis. 

You may need to take some pain medicine, it could be strong medicine and you have side effects from it so you might control the pain somewhat with your pain medication, but the pain medication makes you very drowsy or it may make your mind a little foggy. It’s hard to concentrate sometimes. I have clients that complain the medicine makes them dizzy and so they’re not able to move around very much because of the dizziness. 

Those are all factors that will be considered in a disability. So, you can see by what I’m telling you, what I’m describing that it all depends on how your arthritis affects you and how it’s going to affect your day-to-day activities. Which then will be evaluated to see well how would that affect you if you were on the job. How would that affect you doing any kind of simple job? Even a sit-down desk job and it might be a kind of job you’ve not done before but Social Security is still going to look at whether you could do that kind of job. So, that’s how your case will be evaluated.

If you need more information go to my website www.sharonchristielaw.com or call my office at 800-218-7062. Thanks for listening.