Benefits for Individual with Diabetes with Gastroparesis

Gloria Wozniak, 53, is married with two adult children. At age 10, she was diagnosed with diabetes, which was treated with insulin injections. For the past several years, she had been using an insulin pump. She worked in auto and medical supplies sales until complications, due to the diabetes, left her unable to work. She filed for Social Security Disability but was denied.

Attorney Neil H. Good represented Wozniak at her Social Security Administration hearing, before an Administrative Law Judge. In his pre-hearing memo, Attorney Good described the serious conditions caused by Wozniak’s diabetes.

Wozniak suffered autonomic neuropathy: damage of the nerves affecting her involuntary body functions. This caused dizziness and fainting. Once she lost teeth when she passed out and fell through drywall.  She also had gastroparesis, a paralysis of her stomach muscles, which caused chronic nausea and vomiting and bouts of constipation alternating with diarrhea.

When her glucose levels were low, Wozniak experienced hypoglycemic visual disturbances and hallucinations. She had retinopathy with increasingly blurry vision and loss of acuity, plus also suffered from neuropathy, and numbness and tingling in her legs and feet.  She also suffered from depression and anxiety.

The SSA’s Administrative Law Judge ruled that the “severity of the claimant’s impairments medically equals the criteria” set forth in federal regulations. The judge approved Gloria Wozniak for Social Security Disability benefits.