Guest Blogger

If you have been diagnosed with cancer, you may be wondering if you’ll qualify for Social Security disability benefits. Unfortunately, the answer may not be a simple yes or no. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has different eligibility criteria for each applicant.

Danielle Ofri is an internist at Bellevue Hospital, an associate professor of medicine at NYU, and editor in chief of the Bellevue Literary Review. Her latest book is What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear. Doctor-patient communication is a two-way highway of information, with each person endeavoring to convey information to the other. But there can be numerous roadblocks and detours, as anyone who has been party to our medical system can attest.

Paul Kraus had already proven himself to be a survivor by the time he was diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma in 1997. Born in a Nazi labor camp in 1944, Paul survived a cross-country escape to Poland with his mother and older brother when he was just a few months old. Four years later, he survived the ocean voyage aboard a refugee ship to Australia where the family started a new life and where he has lived ever since. Unfortunately, that emigration to one of world’s top producers of asbestos during the height of the mineral’s worldwide popularity probably also led to his unexpected diagnosis of mesothelioma almost 50 years later.