Losing a job is bad enough. Losing a job after learning that you have a chronic medical condition that is only likely to get worse is devastating.
But don't just take my word for it. Ask Patricia Ketner, a 50-year-old Winston-Salem woman who is living through just such an economic nightmare this summer.
After working as a waitress for more than 30 years, Ketner started to train for a new career in early childhood education at Forsyth Technical Community College and began to work in a day-care center.
Just when things were moving along nicely, the bottom dropped out. Ketner learned in March that she had relapsing and remitting multiple sclerosis. The recommended course of treatments -- shots three times a week to treat her symptoms -- spelled the end of her job and turned her into a statistic.
Rather than being an all-too-rare success story of a woman who was able to retrain for a new career in the midst of recession, Ketner became one of the 11.7 percent of Triad workers who are unemployed.
"What hurts the most is that I was a person who was on the go all the time," Ketner said. "And now my life has come to a complete stop."
An uphill fight
Sick, jobless and dependent on her husband is not the way Ketner envisioned herself spending her middle years. She always figured herself to be one of those paying into the Social Security system, not one who reluctantly needed to try to get something out of it.
Yet she found herself filling out an application for disability benefits in April after continued and discouraging attempts to find some work she could do. What she found was nearly as discouraging as the job hunt in an economy that has only just begun to show signs of life.
Roughly 3 million Americans will apply for disability this year, an increase of about 400,000 from 2008. Of those, about two-thirds are denied right away by state agencies that screen the applications. According to articles in The New York Times, most of those who are turned down give up with little resistance.
Those willing to continue their fight through an appeals process that can take years wind up winning their cases nearly 70 percent of the time.
The system is designed to be strict, and its requirements are daunting. In theory, that cuts down on malingerers and malcontents trying to beat something out of the system. That's a good thing in a program that pays out $12 billion monthly in benefits to 13 million Americans.
But what can happen -- as Ketner and her husband, George, will attest -- is that the system can needlessly penalize people who actually are in need of assistance.
"Why do they even have a disability program if they don't help?" a clearly frustrated George Ketner said. "It's aggravating that they spend all that time checking on people and still turn them down. I don't understand."
A preference to be working
Given her druthers, Patricia Ketner would be working.
She wouldn't be at the mercy of a system that's required her to hire a lawyer to push her claim.
While she is waiting, she continues to apply for jobs, all the while disclosing her condition. She said that her right arm trembles and that her left tingles and goes numb.
Then there are the shots she takes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. They often give her flu-like side effects, further limiting her ability to work.
"They might ask, ‘How many days can you work?'" Patricia Ketner said of potential employers. "I can't lie to people when I put in applications, so I'll tell them about my MS, and they'll say, ‘Sorry, we can't use you.'"
It's difficult to say which is more frustrating, wanting to work and not being able to or struggling with a disability system and its built-in roadblocks.
"It is a shock to be 50 and find all this out," Patricia Ketner said. "My whole world turned.… But I'll keep fighting. What choice do I have?"
■ Scott Sexton can be reached at 727-7481 or at ssexton@wsjournal.com.
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