Criticall illness and NMO Devics

Hi

I have been diagnosed with CIS and Transverse mylitis. I am expecting a diagnosis of devics or NMO in the next 6 gto 12 months. My MRI and other symptoms sadly make it almost certain. We are waiting for a period and another MRI prior to Neuro making DX.

My critiall illness policy covers me for MS. NMO used to be considered a type of MS, now is its own disease. NMO /devics is not listed on my pre 2012 policy although MS is. Has anyone been diagnosed with devics/nmo since 2012 and had a claim paid under MS. LV have since added NMO to their list of CI.

I am extremely worried as I am deteriorating fast and struggling to cope with this potential financial disaster.I am praying for MS and not NMO just so my family can keep their home and business.

Anyone got any ideas? Thanks. M

I’m sorry, I can’t help - I was diagnosed both pre 2012, and with MS.

However, I believe the critical illness list cannot be exhaustive (if it was, it would exclude anyone with a rare disease!).

Additionally, IF your diagnosis would have been covered under the original policy (it’s only the medical classification of NMO that has changed, not the policy), AND it would also have been covered under any new policy taken out post 2012, I think they’d be on very shaky ground turning you down due to an accident of timing, and you could always resort to the Ombudsman.

Hopefully, that won’t be necessary, and they’ll settle it anyway. It’s difficult to see how NMO could NOT be a critical illness, if it would have been previously (as a subset of MS), and is still (as an illness in its own right).

It’s in no way your fault that the medical profession declared NMO is not a sub-class of MS - indeed, I didn’t know they had!

My guess (as a trained but non-practising lawyer) is that you won’t have any problems, but I think it’s open to challenge even if you did.

Tina

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Many thanks for this. It is a great comfort. I know diagnosis takes a long time. It all overwhelms me occasionally.

thank you once again.

Maria

Try to cross you bridges when you come to them.

I worried and worried that I wouldn’t get my critical illness - not for the same reasons as you, but because I’d been to the doctor about a number of things over the years, which although not obviously neurological, I now realise were MS-related.

So I felt sure the insurers would say either I, or my doctor, knew, or should have known, I was already ill, before I purchased he insurance.

So I was really expecting a rejection letter, saying: “No, you already had it when you applied - look at all this stuff you’d been to the doctor about!” But in fact, they were fine. Although it’s easy to say with hindsight that my aches and pains were probably related, they didn’t think anything was such a red flag that a normal person (or doctor) should have seen what was coming. Nothing was challenged at all.

In fact, although I gave them the address of my consultant, I am sure they never contacted him, because I’d ticked the box saying I wanted to see a copy of his reply - which I never did. So I assume there wasn’t one, because they hadn’t asked.

Apparently, they were able to settle my claim purely from the GP’s notes, presumably because there was a nice clear letter in there, from the consultant, diagnosing me with MS. They can’t have thought there was anything suspicious or ambiguous about it, that they needed to clarify with him, so that was it.

I was glad of the money, of course, although I’d been half hoping they’d say: “We don’t believe you’re critically ill!”, as that would have given me a glimmer of hope I might not be.

I was shocked by how readily they accepted I had MS, and realised that if the insurance company wasn’t going to challenge, there was no chance of a last-minute reprieve. They really must be pretty damn sure.

Tina

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