When a person receives a cancer diagnosis, they can rather quickly experience some big impacts on their life, both from the disease and the treatments. These potential effects include impacts on their work life. A recent study indicates it is not at all uncommon for a person to miss a fair chunk of time from work in the year following a diagnosis.
In the study, data regarding thousands of individuals, some of whom were cancer sufferers, was analyzed. Among the things the researchers looked at was what happened for the cancer sufferers when it came to amount of time missed from work and their income in the time after their diagnosis.
The study found that the average amount of missed time from work for the cancer sufferers in their first year following diagnosis was five weeks.
One of the biggest effects having to miss time from work can have on a person is a drop in income. The study found that in the first two years following diagnosis, cancer sufferers averaged a 40 percent drop in annual labor markets earnings.
As this shows, it often doesn’t take long for cancer sufferers to experience some pretty big financial impacts in relation to their condition. Now, for some cancer sufferers, cancer doesn’t only cause them to miss work in the short term, but ends up having some very long-lasting employment effects, sometimes even permanently taking them out of the workforce.
When facing such long-term employment effects, financial support to help address income losses from such effects can be a big boon. One type of financial benefit cancer sufferers sometimes qualify for are Social Security Disability benefits. Among the things that play a big role in whether a person’s cancer qualifies them for SSD benefits is what sorts of effects the condition has on their work abilities.
Source: CNBC, “Cancer hits Americans in the wallet: Study,” Oct. 27, 2015