Obtaining Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) can be a time-consuming and stressful experience. Two out of every three applicants initially are denied. While still a young woman, years of accidents and health issues took their toll on Aimee Koehn. Read how Allsup helped Mrs. Koehn when employment was no longer an option for her.

 

 

 

Henderson, Colorado—Aimee Koehn never considered herself disabled. Now only 38, she thought being disabled meant being an invalid. And she wasn’t. But after a couple of blunt-force head injuries exacerbated by years of undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions, Mrs. Koehn was far from well.

 

Her life was less complicated until the mid-1990s. Afflicted with a bad overbite, she had surgery in 1994. Since then, her jaw has been held together with a metal bracket. In those days, she worked at an aerospace firm and enjoyed recreation. Unfortunately, the first time she tried knee boarding—essentially water skiing on her knees—she had an accident in 1997 that resulted in a head injury.

 

“I was bedridden for about a month,” Mrs. Koehn said. “A brain scan showed an interaction that was a type of traumatic brain injury. I was still going to work at the aerospace company but they kept sending me home because I couldn’t hold my head up. It took about a year to relearn motor skills. But my doctors said I was just depressed and put me on medication for that.”

 

In 2003, her aerospace job was sent to Singapore. Unemployed for two years, she drew benefits as a full-time student studying for a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Never fully recovered, Mrs. Koehn continued with school until 2005—when she and her husband took to the floor for amateur swing dancing that went wrong. She slipped and fell face first on the dance floor, breaking her nose and other bones. “I had a concussion,” she said. “It wasn’t as bad as the first one, but I started to have a tough time with cognition and pronouncing words.”

 

In 2006, she found a job at a halfway house, but worked there only three weeks until an inmate overdosed. Mrs. Koehn performed prolonged cardiopulmonary resuscitation on what turned out to be a deceased patient. It was a bad experience, she said. She felt unwell and, not long after, she learned she had a sinus infection and vertigo. She then had sinus surgery because the metal holding her jaw together from the earlier operation was cutting from the inside out.

 

“I still wanted to work,” she said, “but I just kept getting sick. I spent more than $80,000 on doctors, yet they said my problems weren’t physical but that I was crazy. I started to believe them and felt like checking myself in.”

 

She was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which causes body-wide pain and tenderness in the joints and muscles. “I had a lot of sick days,” Mrs. Koehn recalled, “but my youth kept me going.”

 

That’s when a friend suggested she should apply for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits. Searching for details on her computer, she saw an advertisement for Allsup.

 

Allsup is a nationwide provider of Social Security disability, Medicare and Medicare Secondary Payer compliance services for individuals, employers and insurance carriers. Founded in 1984, Allsup employs nearly 800 professionals who deliver specialized services supporting people with disabilities and seniors so they may lead lives that are as financially secure and as healthy as possible.

 

Mrs. Koehn called Allsup in March 2008, and the company’s professionals went to work. “Allsup did it all,” she said. “They collected my records and got the doctors to sign the forms. I didn’t have to do anything except keep Allsup updated on my condition.”

 

Turned down on her initial application and disability appeal—which is typical even with professional help from Allsup—Mrs. Koehn’s case was scheduled for a hearing before an administrative law judge in early 2010. Allsup representative Robert Edwards accompanied Mrs. Koehn and her husband to the hearing and, as Mrs. Koehn explained, Mr. Edwards did his best to describe her condition to prove his client’s post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms to the judge.

 

Three months passed with no word. Meanwhile, in a final cruel stroke, Mrs. Koehn was diagnosed with chiari malformation, structural defects in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls balance. The previously undetected birth defect could have led to some of her ailments.

 

Mrs. Koehn called Allsup to update her records with her newfound condition and was told that very day Allsup had received the judge’s favorable ruling.

 

“I dropped to my knees,” she said. “After three months on edge going through every emotion I could possibly go through, I thought this was a blessing from God.”

 

Her SSDI benefits will help. As she said, “We still might lose our house, but I can feed my kids, which wasn’t always certain after I got sick.”

 

In the end, Mrs. Koehn was thankful for Allsup. “I was really comfortable and pleased that Allsup was in charge,” she said. “For them to do all that they did rather than me do it, I’m glad I went with them.”