The heart is so important moment-to-moment that when it is not functioning properly a person notices it almost all of the time. Whether it’s pain, fatigue, loss of blood flow to an extremity (hands or arms) causing numbness, dizziness or near-passing out spells, poor exercise tolerance, and (usually) some combination of all of these, many times people with these disorders struggle just to get through every day. Medical treatments have advanced incredibly in the last 30 years, but nevertheless people with supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) atrial fibrillation, POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), hypertension, and “passing out or near-passing out spells” (such as neurocardiogenic syncope) sometimes continue to have significant and disabling symptoms even with treatment. And, as most people know, the treatments for cardiac conditions (surgery, and/or numerous cardiac medications)) can be very invasive and disabling in and of themselves.

Cardiac conditions usually do 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. It is also typical that many of the worst symptoms do not occur as long as someone is getting frequent rest throughout the day. Either way, it is not unusual for a cardiac 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.