Digesting food may have little obvious connection with completing basic work activities, but the pain from consuming food and drink can be debilitating. If you are experiencing significant pain from your stomach and abdominal areas, then this could affect workplace productivity due to requiring extra breaks to rest and use the restroom. 

Many of our clients also reported spending all day in their bedrooms due to the severity of symptoms. Regardless of your diagnosis, a strong case involving this medical condition typically charts the following course:

  •  Referrals: Establish care with a gastroenterologist. Your primary care physician can refer you to one.
  • Symptoms: Tell that provider about how frequently you experience the symptoms of fatigue, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea every week. Keeping a calendar will help you do this. 
  • Compliance: Take your medications every day. Find a system to make this work for you. (If the SSA sees any signs of non-compliance in your medical records, then they will severely discount the severity of this condition.)
  •  Diet: Avoid the foods and drinks as recommended by your physician.

Escalate your Treatment: Consider surgical intervention if the gastroenterologist recommends it. Whether or not you get surgery is your choice. Obviously going through with it will make a strong impression on your judge about how severe this problem is for you. But even the doctor writing down in the medical records that he/she recommended the surgery will create a strong impression too.

written by: Jacob Hugentobler, Hearing Attorney

Image Credit: Medicine Plus, Crohn’s Disease, National Library of Medicine, available at https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000249.htm 

Crohn’s Disease: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment of this Bowel Disease, Care Health Insurance, available at https://www.careinsurance.com/blog/health-insurance-articles/crohn-s-disease-causes-symptoms-and-treatment