It’s almost impossible to meet someone whose life has not been affected by cancer, either because they’ve had it themselves or a loved one did. Sometimes, especially when it’s caught early, people respond well to treatments (which are getting better virtually every day) and can get on with working relatively soon, or never need to miss much work to begin with. However, other types, particularly aggressive types of cancer, can unfortunately be a very different story, including advanced stages of brain, lung, and breast cancer, cancer of the lymph system, or of the gastrointestinal system (colon, rectal, stomach, kidney, and prostate cancers). And, as most people know, the treatments for cancer (chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery) can be very invasive and disabling in and of themselves.

Most of the time, cancer does not affect a person the same way every day; it is very typical for a person with this kind of medical condition to have “good days and bad days” (especially around the time of chemo or radiation treatments), although the impact of something like a surgery can be permanent. Either way, it is not unusual for a cancer patient to have days where functioning does not seem very affected at all, but other days where it’s a struggle to even do basic daily activities.

A disabling condition does not need to be disabling every day to support a finding that a person is unable to work, because being able to work means being able to do it day after day, week after week, on a regular and continuous basis.