claiming unemployment or disability for medical leave of absence? anyone tried it?

I am worried about taking 4-6 weeks off with no income and still having to pay my insurance (and hopefully having a job to return to)... has anyone tried claiming unemployment or disability for their medical leave., is it possible???

Completely possible to claim disability... go to your state disability website. Your doctor will have forms to fill out...

Have you checked with your payroll department to make sure that they don't offer some sort of salary continuation as a part of short-term disability? I work for a state university, and we accrue sick and vacation leave. I have approximately 3-1/2 weeks of sick leave available, but my doc has advised me to schedule no less than 4 weeks off. We have a salary continuation (60%) available to us after we use all of our available sick leave. I may not have known this if I hadn't done some checking. Best wishes to you, and God bless!

thanks for the responses, I have only been with my current employer for seven months and they have been so wonderful to me, with all of the pre-op appt's and time I have missed. but I don't think I have enough time accrued to get them to pay me for the time.

Not true....I've only been with my current employer for 6+ months and went to HR and was given the forms to fill out, have my doctor fill out and return to him. From what I understand you get 2/3's of your salary while on disability. Do you pay into medical? If so, then there should be no issues whatsoever. Check with them and see.

What state are you in? You should have SDI... I'm from California, so not sure how this works but I think it's applicable across the US. Let me know what state you're in and I'll find more info