Difficulties in Applying for Social Security Disability: Respectful Disagreement and Suggestions for the SSDI Application Process (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781466434844)

I am a husband, father, grandfather and lifetime contract salesman, with experience in health writing that began in 2004. I completed theological studies with Liberty University in 1996. I formerly served as editor and forum moderator of Thyroid Health for a major multi-topic content site and as a general health writer for another, where I received Editor's Choice Awards for my articles on health subjects. In 2003 I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism; "Hashimoto's thyroiditis" being the cause. This autoimmune form of thyroid disease that causes destruction of the thyroid gland resulted in my also developing "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome", due to a compromised immune system with severe co-morbid "Adrenal Fatigue". I also suffered severe anxiety symptoms, including panic attacks early into the onset of Hashimoto's thyroiditis (Hashitoxicosis). A common heart murmur I was diagnosed with in my teens called "Mitral Valve Prolapse", also worsened in severity of symptoms, with the development of these other health disorders. My eventual receiving of diagnoses was a difficult process with proper diagnostic testing not being ordered by the first doctors I sought treatment from. These types of issues were inspiration for me to become proactive in my own health care and to self-educate myself on these health disorders, which I have done extensively since 2003. I now enjoy sharing this information with other patients experiencing my same health disorders. During the early 1990s, I marketed an outdoors product I invented and that I formed a small corporation to patent, manufacture and sell called the "Rod Floater" (now a registered Trademark). I traveled the U.S. making presentations to groups of Wal-Mart zone and district managers and received authorization to sell the product in two regions of Wal-Mart stores for five years. I also sold the product to Bass Pro Shops, Cabela's and Academy Stores, all of which still carry the product and I landed a national promotion for the product with Kerr-McGee Oil Company who began using the product to promote their outboard motor oil in 1992. In 1996 I licensed the product to TTI-Blakemore, a major fishing tackle conglomerate, from which I am still paid royalties from sales of the product. I invented and marketed five additional outdoors products, also getting these into Wal-Mart stores and afterward sold them outright rather than licensing them. I was featured in the May 2001 issue of Inventors digest magazine.