Reconsideration denial from June still haunts my sleep, but I just realized something dumb I did for 18 months

I kept submitting the same type of medical notes, thinking more pages equaled more proof. Then my lawyer pointed out my MRI report from February has a line about lumbar stenosis, but wrote my appeal around back pain only. How specific does the functional report have to be before the judge actually reads it?

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stellam897d ago

Four hundred and thirty seven pages. That's how many pages of the same physical therapy notes I submitted for a year and a half, all saying "patient reports pain" with zero actual medical language about my spine. My lawyer about choked on his coffee when he saw the MRI line about stenosis buried on page 212, and asked me if I thought judges played scavenger hunts. So yeah, the functional report has to basically spell out your limitations like a toddler's picture book, with each body part labeled and photographed from three angles. I learned the hard way that judges skim, they don't read, and they definitely won't connect your dots for you. At this point I'm half tempted to submit my next appeal written in crayon with a big arrow pointing to the stenosis part.