The Paper Trail

Ring the bells! Let the celebrations commence! In fact, I think I’m going to buy a lottery ticket on the way home. Good luck has come through at last and perseverance has paid off!!

What happened? I FINALLY got the results of M’s NeuroPsych exam – which Social Security needs/wants to make the final determination on his disability claim.

We’ve only been trying to get these test results into the hands of Social Security for at least four months now.

Social Security called me back in February, asking for these results. I had to find the doctor who had performed the test, because he had changed practices and had taken these psychological test results with him, so they weren’t available in the normal patient medical record – or at least that’s what I was told.

It took a while, but I finally tracked him down, got all the contact info for him and his new office, then called the Social Security person back – gave her all the contact info and thought “Whew, mission accomplished!”

Imagine my surprise when I got a call at 7:15 am last Wednesday and a brand new Social Security person was telling me that 1) they did NOT have M’s NeuroPsych Evaluation exam test results, 2) they had been having “personnel issues” and no one had worked on our case in the preceding four months and 3) she didn’t show anywhere in her records that the person I had spoken to in February had contacted the doctor or made any attempt to get the results.

I think it shows great restraint that I didn’t yell at or kill anyone when I heard all that.

That morning, when I started my quest all over again -SURPRISE! – the physician who performed the test had . . . wait for it . . . retired! No idea where his records might have gone.

It took a while, but I was finally able to track them down and this time, I got the test results sent directly to me. Ha!

Of course, (let’s all act surprised!) the woman at Social Security didn’t answer her phone this afternoon and it isn’t set up to receive voice mails, but I will NOT be defeated now!

As I was reading through his test results, there wasn’t anything in there that was surprising. I did note, though, that in one of the first visits to the neurologists office to start this whole process, they didn’t believe me when I said I thought he had memory and cognitive issues.

Believe me, I didn’t want to be right.