| >There are objective tests for all of these pathologies, though those tests are often inconclusive in the face of the symptoms. Nothing good, sadly. My wife was in banking for twelve years and worked her way up from a teller to a fairly senior position. Her work ethic was spectacular - she had just two sick days in the previous five years and she was promoted almost yearly, always receiving an excellent review. A few years ago, she went from having occasional discomfort to waking with fairly severe pain daily. It got so bad that she had to take time off, and eventually took FMLA for a full twelve weeks to see if it would help. It didn't and she was fired soon after. She filed for disability after being diagnosed with Fybromyalgia. Our lawyer sent her to bother specialist doctors and independent testing labs to get complete documentation. They had her complete various tasks like screwing in a screwdriver, raising a weight above her head for X seconds etc. and then asked her to rate her pain levels and other self-reported things. In the end, she was denied for disability, mostly because disability is no longer about actually being disabled - it's now about essentially filling the gap between welfare and medicaid. In the written opinion however, the stated reason was that all the evidence was self-reported, implying she could be making it all up (because who wouldn't want to give up a successful and lucrative career for some minimal-level disability payments). Anyway, I learned two main things: 1. There are no commonly accepted objective tests for pain - it's almost all self-reporting. 2. The disability system in the US is heavily used as supplemental welfare. |