One of my main goals in writing this blog is to help increase awareness of and compassion for Long COVID through stories from my personal experience with the illness. I recently read an article about another woman’s experience of Long COVID. Her failed attempt to receive social security disability felt like a personal gut punch.
I am pretty confident that my blog does not currently have the reach for the judge in her case to be reading it, but the phrasing of the judge’s decision felt like the words were taken directly from my blog. The judge ruled that she was not eligible for the social safety net of social security because “Long COVID ‘do[es] not cause more than minimal limitations’ and doesn’t constitute a ‘severe impairment,’ the decision stated, suggesting I could still work full-time while sitting or lying down.’ “
While I have been successful at working while sitting or lying down throughout my Long COVID journey, January 2025 is the first time in 14 months that my symptoms abated enough for me to work at a full-time rate on most days. Those days where I didn’t was more likely due to PT and other appointments rather than the limitations caused by my symptoms.
But mine is a mild case of Long COVID. My worst days — when it took every molecule of my being to lift my arm to bring my water within range of my mouth and then to force myself three times a day to the kitchen for fast and simple food — are some people’s best days with Long COVID.
My heart goes out to the patients with severe Long COVID and to those (mild or severe) who do not experience improvement in their symptoms and overall health.
Shame on the judge in the article and shame on any judge who decides that Long COVID is not a disability and denies a patient the social safety net established under President Eisenhower’s administration.
Anyone who has had COVID is at risk of developing Long COVID. The Mayo Clinic states that researchers estimate between 10% and 35% of those who have had COVID will develop Long COVID. That’s either 1 in 10 people or 1 in 3 people. And anyone of those people may have symptoms severe enough to need to turn to social security disability.
Fingers crossed that my positive momentum continues and I never have to resort to an attempt to receive SSDI. Fingers crossed that you remain healthy, don’t develop Long COVID, and don’t need to attempt to receive SSDI. If you are on that unfortunate path, fingers crossed that SSDI remains an option given all the changes going on in the federal government1 and that you get a sympathetic judge.
Feature image credit: Safety Net by irene hoffman from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
- An example of federal government changes that impact Long COVID came to my attention the day this post published. I read in The Sick Times‘s weekly newsletter that the federal government resources on accommodations for Long COVID as a disability had been removed under the Trump administration’s purge of public data. Betsy Ladyzhets writes: “These pages offered crucial information about rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for people with Long COVID and their employers.” Now, that information is harder to find even though those rights are still applicable, at least for now. https://thesicktimes.org/2025/02/11/now-offline-government-resources-about-long-covid-as-a-disability/ ↩︎
Carolyn Ristau 