One of the most common obstacles faced by LTD claimants is the lack of sufficient medical evidence to support their claim. Many conditions cause symptoms that are subjective and variable, making them difficult to diagnose and treat. Moreover, these symptoms may not show up on standard medical tests, such as blood work or imaging scans. A lack of evidence supporting your disabling subjective symptoms can lead to the denial or termination of LTD benefits, even when you are genuinely suffering and unable to work.
A symptom diary is a useful tool to document and substantiate subjective symptoms. Below we’ll discuss how to use a symptom diary to support your long term disability claim.
What is a Symptom Diary?
A symptom diary is a personalized log used specifically to document and monitor the subjective symptoms associated with your medical condition. It plays a crucial role for individuals experiencing medical conditions with symptoms that are subjective and often difficult to measure with standard medical tests, such as:
Pain
Fatigue
Dizziness
Nausea
Headaches
Mood swings
Sleep disturbances
The symptom diary helps capture the day-to-day variability of symptoms, providing a detailed account of how they manifest and evolve over time.
The real value of a symptom diary lies in its ability to systematically record the impact of these symptoms on your daily life. By maintaining a consistent and thorough record, the diary helps in forming a more complete picture of your health status, supporting your claim for disability insurance benefits.
What Conditions Can a Symptom Diary Help Document?
A symptom diary can be an invaluable tool for documenting a wide range of conditions, especially those with symptoms that fluctuate or are subjective in nature. Here are some examples of conditions that can particularly benefit from the detailed tracking provided by a symptom diary:
Chronic Pain Disorders: Such as fibromyalgia, arthritis, peripheral neuropathy, or back pain, where the intensity and triggers of pain can vary significantly.
Neurological Disorders: Including Multiple Sclerosis (“MS”), Parkinson’s disease, or epilepsy, where symptoms can change day by day.
Mental Health Issues: Like anxiety, depression, or bipolar disorder, where mood fluctuations and other symptoms can be challenging to quantify.
Autoimmune Diseases: Such as lupus or Crohn’s disease, which often present with a complex array of symptoms that may ebb and flow.
Endocrine Disorders: Like diabetes or thyroid disorders, where symptoms may be closely tied to diet, activity, and medication.
Gastrointestinal Conditions: Including irritable bowel syndrome (“IBS”) or gastroesophageal reflux disease (“GERD”), where symptoms can be triggered by food intake and stress.
Respiratory Conditions: Such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (“COPD”), where environmental factors can impact symptoms.
By tracking subjective symptoms over time, the diary helps in documenting patterns and providing your insurance company with a detailed insight into your day-to-day struggles.
What Should I Record in My Symptom Diary?
When maintaining a symptom diary, it’s essential to record detailed information that captures the full extent of your condition’s impact on your daily life and activities. Here are the key elements you should consistently include:
Symptoms: Note each symptom you experience, describing its type (like pain, fatigue, or dizziness), intensity (often rated on a scale from 1 to 10), and any specific characteristics.
Time and Frequency: Document the date and time of each symptom occurrence along with how frequently they happen.
Duration: Record how long each symptom lasts. Persistent symptoms or those of short duration can provide insights into the nature of your condition.
Context: Include details about what you were doing when the symptoms started, such as engaging in physical activity or experiencing stress.
Medications and Treatments: Keep track of any medications or treatments, noting the dosage, frequency, and their effectiveness in managing your symptoms.
Impact on Daily Activities: Describe how your symptoms affect your ability to perform daily tasks, including both personal and professional activities. This illustrates the practical impact of your condition on your daily life.
Emotional Well-being: Record any changes in your emotional state, as physical symptoms can significantly affect your mental health.
The importance of being detailed in a symptom diary cannot be overstressed. Detailed entries, including each symptom, its frequency, and duration, along with how these symptoms interfere with your daily activities, provide a holistic view of your condition. This detailed information can be critical in supporting long term disability claims by showing the real-world impact of your condition.
How Does a Symptom Diary Help Prove My Long Term Disability Claim?
Proving a long term disability claim can be particularly challenging when it involves subjective symptoms, such as pain, fatigue, or mental health issues, which don’t always show up on standard medical tests. Insurance companies often approach these claims with skepticism, primarily because subjective symptoms can be difficult to measure and verify compared to objective conditions like broken bones, which can be confirmed with an X-ray.
A symptom diary plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between subjective experiences and the evidence required to substantiate a disability claim. By meticulously documenting the daily reality of your symptoms, the diary provides a tangible record that complements other forms of evidence. This can include everything from the severity and frequency of symptoms to their impact on your daily life and ability to work. It helps illustrate a consistent and detailed account of your condition over time, adding credibility to the subjective symptoms you report.
In conjunction with a symptom diary, other forms of evidence are also critical. Objective evidence from medical tests and records establishes a clinical basis for your condition. In-person examinations allow healthcare professionals to assess your condition directly. Opinions from your doctors, based on their prolonged observation and treatment of your symptoms, provide professional testimonies to your claim. Together, these elements create a comprehensive picture of your disability. The symptom diary enriches this picture by continuously documenting how your symptoms affect you daily, providing a compelling narrative that supports the medical findings and expert opinions. This combination of detailed personal records with objective data and expert opinion makes a strong case to your insurance company, significantly enhancing the credibility and validity of your claim.
How Often Should I Update My Symptom Diary?
To ensure your symptom diary accurately reflects the ongoing nature of your symptoms and their impact on your daily life, it’s important to update it regularly and consistently. The recommended frequency of entries can depend on the type and variability of your symptoms, but here are some general guidelines:
Daily Entries: If your symptoms change frequently or you’re in the initial stages of documenting for a disability claim, it’s advisable to make daily entries. This helps capture the day-to-day variations and provides a detailed snapshot over time, which can be critical in understanding the progression or fluctuation of your condition.
Multiple Times a Day: For conditions with symptoms that can vary significantly throughout the day, such as chronic pain, fatigue, or mental health fluctuations, you might consider recording symptoms several times a day. This could be in the morning, midday, and evening, or whenever a significant change occurs, to document how symptoms evolve and respond to daily activities or treatments.
Weekly Summaries: Once you have an established diary and your symptoms are relatively stable, weekly summaries might suffice. These should still detail any changes in the pattern or intensity of symptoms, treatments and their effects, and any new activities or stressors that could influence your condition.
The key is consistency and detail. Regular entries help build a comprehensive record that shows not just the symptoms themselves, but also their persistence and impact over time. This ongoing record is invaluable evidence for your long term disability claim, demonstrating the real and sustained impact of your condition on your life. Make sure to pick symptoms and a frequency of recording that you will stick to.
What Are the Common Mistakes to Avoid When Keeping a Symptom Diary?
Keeping a symptom diary is a valuable practice for documenting conditions for a long term disability claim, but there are several common pitfalls that can diminish its effectiveness.
Here are some key mistakes to avoid:
Irregular Entries: One of the most common mistakes is not updating the diary regularly. Sporadic entries can lead to gaps in data, making it difficult to identify patterns or changes in symptoms over time. Consistent daily or multiple daily entries are crucial for capturing the full scope of your condition. The most important aspect of a symptom diary is that it actually gets done!
Vague Descriptions: Another frequent oversight is providing vague or generalized descriptions of symptoms. It’s important to be as specific as possible about the nature, severity, and exact manifestations of each symptom. Descriptions should include details such as the type of pain (sharp, throbbing, burning), exact locations, and any factors that alleviate or worsen it.
Omitting the Emotional Impact: Often, individuals focus solely on physical symptoms and neglect to document the emotional and psychological effects. Conditions can have significant mental health implications, affecting mood, stress levels, and overall well-being. Recording these aspects can provide a more comprehensive view of how your condition affects your life.
Forgetting Contextual Information: Failing to note the context in which symptoms occur is also a common mistake. Including information about activities, environment, and events leading up to or following the onset of symptoms can help identify potential triggers or aggravating factors.
Inconsistency in Measurement: Using different scales or methods to describe symptom severity can lead to inconsistencies in your records. Decide on a consistent scale (e.g., 1-10) for rating severity and stick to it across all entries.
Neglecting Medication and Treatment Effects: It’s important to document not only the medications and treatments you are using but also their effects on your symptoms. This includes both positive effects and any side effects or lack of effect.
Not Preparing for Medical Appointments: A symptom diary should be used as a tool during medical appointments. Failing to bring your diary or highlight key points before consultations can result in missed opportunities to discuss your condition thoroughly with your healthcare provider.
Avoiding these pitfalls will enhance the utility of your symptom diary, making it a more powerful tool for managing your health and strengthening your long term disability claim.
How Can The Maddox Firm Prove My Long Term Disability Claim?
The Maddox Firm is dedicated to helping you successfully navigate the complexities of your long term disability (“LTD”) claim, especially when it comes to proving conditions characterized by subjective symptoms. Our experienced team is skilled in handling all aspects of the claims process to ensure you receive the benefits you deserve.
Here are a few ways we help prove your LTD claim:
We Examine Your Policy and Assess Your Claim: We start by thoroughly reviewing your disability insurance policy to understand the specific coverage and the definitions of disability it includes. This initial step is crucial, particularly for conditions with subjective symptoms like chronic pain or mental health issues, as these are often scrutinized more by insurance companies. We assess how your symptoms align with the policy terms to build a strong foundation for your claim.
We Handle All Communications with Your Insurance Company: Dealing with insurance companies can be daunting and complex, especially when you’re already managing a disabling condition. Our firm takes over all communications with your insurance company, ensuring that your claim is presented clearly and effectively. We advocate on your behalf to counter any skepticism from your insurance company regarding the legitimacy of your subjective symptoms.
We Help You Obtain Evidence to Support Your Claim: Proving a claim with subjective symptoms requires robust evidence. We assist in gathering and organizing medical records, doctor’s statements, and other relevant documentation. If needed, we will refer you for additional testing that can help substantiate your subjective symptoms, such as neuropsychological evaluations, the CPET, or a tilt table test. Additionally, we guide you in maintaining a detailed symptom diary, which can be pivotal in documenting the day-to-day impact of your symptoms.
We Handle Appeals and Litigation: If your claim is initially denied or underpaid, our legal team is prepared to handle appeals and, if necessary, litigation. We are experienced in arguing cases that involve subjective symptoms, understanding the particular challenges these claims face. We work tirelessly to ensure that your rights are protected and that your claim is presented with the strongest possible argument and evidence.
At The Maddox Firm, we understand the unique challenges posed by claims involving subjective symptoms and are committed to providing the rigorous support and expertise needed to navigate these complexities effectively.
A short term disability or long term disability claim can be a complicated process. If you need help during the claims process, with appealing a claim denial, or with litigating a final adverse short term or long term disability decision, The Maddox Firm can help. The experienced team at The Maddox Firm will examine your insurance policy, correspondence from your insurance company, medical records, and any other relevant documentation in order to give you personalized guidance on how we can help you win your short and/or long term disability claim. Our New Jersey and New York long term disability attorneys help clients nationwide.