
Ask HN: Self-employed, RSI, back pain in NY. Any chance of receiving benefits? - chronicpain54
I&#x27;ve been dealing with a repetitive stress injury (wrist and arm pain) and back&#x2F;neck pain for about 4 years now. I&#x27;m 27.<p>For the past year I&#x27;ve owned a SaaS site, so it&#x27;s mostly passive income. Before that, I freelanced as a programmer. For both of those, I&#x27;ve only been able to work at a computer for about 8 hours a week, and that&#x27;s still with pain. If I worked less, there would be less pain, and if I worked more (which I did sometimes out of necessity), it would get progressively worse, but I haven&#x27;t been able to work less because I need to pay rent.<p>From this page: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alllaw.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;nolo&#x2F;disability&#x2F;disability-benefits-self-employed.html  I need to show that my work isn&#x27;t the following:<p><pre><code>  * provides significant services to the business and brings in $1,090 or more in average monthly income
 
  * is comparable to the work of persons without disability in your community engaged in the same or similar businesses, or

  * is worth $1,090 per month in terms of its effect on the business or what it saves you from having to pay an employee to do the work.
</code></pre>
Now that I own a business which is bringing in some mostly passive revenue (I answer user emails and send out invoices. I don&#x27;t need to do much programming anymore), I&#x27;m hopeful that I might qualify for some assistance, since I can definitely make the argument that I&#x27;m doing less than $1090&#x2F;mo worth of work now, even though the business earns a little more than that (and is growing).<p>Does anybody have advice for where I can go for some help? Is SSDI&#x2F;SSI the right area for me to be looking into, or is there somewhere else I should look? Am I better off focusing my efforts on building the business long-term and finding supplemental income so that I can get by without jumping through all the hoops of government assistance? That&#x27;s been my thinking for the past couple of years, and my goal in starting this business, but I&#x27;ve decided to look into it again now.<p>Any guidance is appreciated.
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YuriNiyazov
Are you actually medically treating the underlying condition? Advil?

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chronicpain54
I've tried a number of things, including physical therapy, but nothing has
really helped substantially yet. Chronic pain is very difficult to treat. I
haven't given up and I am still trying things out. I'm hoping I can qualify
for benefits so that I can focus more on recovery.

For anybody else with similar issues, the best resource I've found is this:
[https://www.painscience.com/](https://www.painscience.com/)

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YuriNiyazov
I am asking because I've had, and successfully dealt with, chronic pain across
a decade. What helped me most is Lyrica. YMMV obviously.

