Picking Up Bits And Pieces

As most of you know, I’ve been battling workman’s comp to get medical stuff done. People gripe about dealing with insurance. Wait until you get to deal with the government version of insurance.

The accident was on January 12. WC confirmed one knee, back, shoulders and neck. They later added the other knee after it showed fractures.

To date, I have done physical therapy that consisted of exercises, heat, massage, TENS treatment, surgery on right knee to remove torn meniscus. Two months after surgery, I am still trying to get WC to approve the physical therapy after surgery. They closed the case. We got it reopened. They approved the pt, but now there is some other crap red tape holding it up.

In the meantime, I take lots of pain pills, and sleeping pills, and muscle relaxants and OTC pills because the prescription stuff puts me to sleep or fogs my brain so badly I can’t think well.

The DDO said in his report I had migraines since I was 20 years old. What I actually told him was I had migraines 20 years ago after a car accident. I was treated and haven’t had any since. It’s possible he misunderstood me because of my accent, which he took time out to mock. I’m guessing he was just trying to whiz through the appt because another dr was waiting to take him to lunch. Regardless, WC won’t pay for migraine medicine that is nearly $20 a pill after my insurance pays the lion’s share. The other pain is due to hyperthyroidism according to him even though he didn’t do a blood test and I told him I’ve had two tests done and they were both normal.

Since I had surgery after the DDO said nothing was wrong, I now get re-evaluated. My lawyer said the chances are very high DDO will not reverse his decision and reinstate WC payments. In essence, this means we get DDO report and then we petition a judge to have a new dr assigned and …we start all over.

Yesterday, when I got the lawyer’s email, I broke.

What the hell. I don’t want to be twenty again. Just put my body back the way it was and let me go back to work.

I did talk to HR and they demanded I return to work. I explained the problem with the medications and said I would either be falling asleep at work or falling asleep driving and probably wind up killing myself or someone else.

HR guys. “It’s ok if you’re groggy at work as long as you don’t fall asleep.”

Me. “It’s ok if I’m groggy while I’m running inventory reports on millions of dollars of inventory every night? Does that seem like it might not be a good idea?”

HR “Just return to work and we can correct your mistakes.”

Me. “And are you going to correct me running off one of the overpasses and killing myself when I fall asleep driving.”

HR “That isn’t my problem, Julie. I don’t care what happens until you get here.”

Thanks, HR.

So, anyway, I indulged in a pity party for a few minutes. I have a two minutes to cry rule. So, I didn’t blubber very long, but I was still wallowing in self pity.

Then I got to thinking about something Will said when he got home from Iraq. We were just sitting, visiting and I asked him if the base was attacked much. He said there weren’t many hits, but there were blasts fairly frequently and there was that morning an IED went off just outside the base on the road.

My heart lurched and I asked him if anyone was hurt.

“Just the bombers.”

“It killed them?”

“Yeah, one of them lived for a while and crawled off leaving part of him trailing behind. So, we got to go out and pick up body parts before breakfast.”

I’ve seen quite a bit of gore. You do when you’re involved with farming and ranching. Accidents happen. Butchering happens. Crap happens. However, thinking about picking up human body parts, even if those humans were trying to kill you, has to be pretty gut-wrenching. Perhaps it’s even worse when they were trying to kill you because you know how close you came to being one of those bits and pieces scattered over the desert.

That’s a lot to digest for someone who’s barely old enough to drink.

That put all my piddly whining into perspective.

I didn’t start out the day picking up body parts, so it’s probably going to be a good day.