Disability Hearing and UK Urologist

My disability hearing was yesterday. It went well, I was confident with my answers to the judge's questions, felt very prepared and I didn't get emotional like I sometimes do out of frustration when talking about my health problems and how it's taken most of my quality of life away. The judge seemed to listen to me, believe what I was saying and really understand how all of my health problems would make it impossible for me to work. My lawyer is also very confident and said he's at least 90% sure that I will win my disability case. I won't know one way or the other until I get a letter in the mail from the Social Security office sometime in the next couple of months. Even though I don't really know if I won or not, it's a relieve for me to have that over with so I can relax a little. 


Today I went to see Dr. Katie Ballert, a urologist at UK that is much more specialized then the urologist I have been seeing because that urologist knew I needed more testing done then she can do.   I really like this urologist. She listens well, is down to earth, doesn't try to scare her patients but also tells it like it, isn't intimidating like some doctors can be, doesn't play games but is medication/procedure/surgery happy, and I feel comfortable with her which is a good thing because the testing that I need done is pretty invasive. She believes my bladder problems are either from one of two different causes: 1. neurological- which falls in line with the what my primary care doctor is thinking or 2. intentional damage from the open abdominal surgery I had to have last March. I have an appointment with a nervous system specialist at UK in May which should hopefully be able to determine one way or the other if the nervous system is the cause of my bladder problems or not. The urologist is going to do her testing after I see the neurologist so that she can have all of the information to come up with a plan once she has the results of the testing she will be doing. Until then though she put me on a muscle relaxer because the muscles around my kidneys and bladder are extremely tight and so muscle relaxers can really be helpful with that which would settle down the symptoms until they can figure out what the problem is truly is. Also, I will be trying pelvic floor physical therapy since that normally helps with symptom control both in the short and long term.