Not giving up!

So I tried to go into work today after being off 2 weeks, and they sent me home after an hour. I am going back tomorrow with my crutches! 

http://ipasgiveaway.com/cp1/?id=41503&tid=CL121014

It's been a while

So, I know it's been a while, but I became real depressed and didn't feel like spreading that around so I stayed away. I have recently been back off work because of the ankle. The issue that I am having is that it happened to cause problems right after my year in.

I have been back to work as an optician and went full time around this time last year. I love the doctors I work for, they are amazing, and I don't want to let them down. They hired me knowing about my problems and still gave me the chance. They soon seen my passion for my work and rewarded it. This is the first place that ever did that. So I am nervous. This is the type of job I have been looking for. It has a ceiling on money, but it felt like home. If I have to limp away I am going to be pissed! If I am rewarded my disability then I can cut my hours but still work and then work from home too,.....I have found something good,....(see the link below). All while still having more time with Seth, and being able to have energy for the everyday stuff. We'll see.

After PT this morning and an evening dental appointment, this gal has had enough pain for one day!





http://ipasgiveaway.com/?id=41503&tid=BLGR

A new work from home for those like me.....

http://ipasgiveaway.com/?id=41503&tid=BGR120914

Dancing Heals

I wrote this earlier in the week and have been dealing with some things since. I have lowered my anxieties and I thought I should put something up,.......

So, I have been having having a lot of problems. I received a letter on Saturday that says that my insurance claim rep. is sending me to a new independent doctor. I am not happy about this only because I have already done this. I feel like they are trying to find someone who will support them, even if it is untrue. I already won my lawsuit and proved that I am not faking anything. Why do they have to make things harder? My anxieties have been going full steam and the thumping in my leg continues to get worse. It is getting to the numb stages where the pain turns into something a little different. It affects my whole body and turns me into a zombie. I can only focus on making the pain stable enough to get through the day and pray that the next is better. I get some of this relief from my chiropractor. The pain will always increase, but he matches it and makes it level out. It never goes completely away, but he moves things and does pressure points on me that help. He also uses laser therapy on the area of the break and ohhhh boy, I love the tingling in my foot at the toes when he does that! I can feel my foot like I used to be able to feel my foot. It is nice. The insurance company didn't like the idea of me going to a chiropractor. They asked me what was the point? The next step of my journey with the doctors after the non-walking cast came off got interesting.

When I got my walking cast I was excited. I could now take off my cast to shave my leg and take a shower!! This is huge for a female, next to wearing heals. The second of which I grow closer to never being able to do again. Look, I know it sounds stupid, but I had great legs before my accident, and loved wearing my heals to show them off. It made me feel good about myself, gave me confidence, and actually helped with my posture. I only wear my heals now when I know I can sit on my butt for the 3 days to a week after I do. When you wear heals you open your “gate” on your ankle. It in turn makes the area inherently weak and more susceptible to wounds. Hence the reason it can be difficult to walk on heals. My gate is closing and will eventually merge the area that used to have a joint and it will no longer be physically possible for me wear them anymore. And it's not just the heals,...dancing, one of God's best ways to release stress is also going to be out, or at least standing and using my legs for dancing. Sitting on a chair dancing doesn't really leave a good impression though.  

On My Soapbox

I have to take a break from 'The story”, and tell you about today. So about four months ago I received a new claim worker from my insurance company that pays for everything. I always get nervous when this happens because you never know how someone is going to do their job; if they are lazy, a procrastinator, or simply hates their job. Either way for the past year I had a wonderful woman who did her job extraordinarily well. This new guy scares the hell out of me. It has only been a few months, I know, but he does not seem to know what he is doing. It is also hard getting a straight answer out of him. He might even be new, and I have taken that into consideration, but I have done his job and I cannot help but to be picky. I took my own insurance agent position seriously while I was doing it, and can only expect that from my own agent.

 Last week I asked my claim rep. for a solid monthly date that he would be processing my check. I had been on a set schedule and it only failed at the end of that persons term, and wanted to know if I needed to start making phones calls to utility companies due to changes in my pay schedule. He said he would “try” for a certain date. I could really go on and on about how unhappy I am about my new claim person, but I will spare you as much as I can on that. I got my check, all is fine so far. I had also asked him for confirmation of payment to those doctors I am currently seeing and still have not received that information either. Needless to say I am not happy about any of this. Can ya tell? Which leads me to my appointment with my chiropractor today.

 Susan is Doctor Hubbard's wife and she also runs the front office for the practice. Doctor Hubbard is close to retiring and has Doctor Fountain working under him as his apprentice to take over the business when he does. Both are very good at what they do. Dr. Hubbard uses old school as well as new school techniques to adjust patients accordingly. He explains the entire process of how he will be able to help you after doing a full exam of you, and will even decline if he feels he cannot help you. Susan was working today and said that she spoke to my claim rep. and it took fifteen minutes to find out from him what he needed for her to do. All this causes stress for me which activates the R.S.D.. My last rep. understood this and understood it for all her clients, which made her good at her job.

There is a scary circle that I go through with the R.S.D., one thing activates another and so on until I am so wound up all I can do is either sit and not allow myself to say anything or cry. R.S.D. causes anxiety disorder and chronic depression. Well, I was already living with these problems and the R.S.D. makes it all worse,...and that's just the mental part. The pain increases with all this, the anxiety is the worst. Ever feel a hundred spiders under your skin crawling through each nerve from one point of your body to another? I have. It is the feeling of an anxiety attack and mine are heightened so much more because of the R.S.D.. Some days it makes parts of my body numb. Since it comes from my ankle injury, it creeps up my leg behind my knee and when the pain comes on it makes the knee buckle. If I don't have my cane I am screwed. This eventually leads to my hip. By now I am limping, which is already causing problems with my hip, but when I have a real bad day the pain increases not only in levels of 1 – 10, but also levels of the body. 

This brings me back to my point about my insurance rep. and the entire field. Why is it so hard to recognize that the body is a connected piece of machinery? Just like your car, if one part is broke or not working properly the other parts are not going to function to their normal capability and if the problem is not fixed in an appropriate time, the other, now stressed parts will start breaking down faster. Our bodies are the same way. I understand if I were applying for coverage and had a preexisting condition that I was already covered on by another insurance. That part of my body is more likely to have continuing problems and is a high risk. I wouldn't want to cover that either. But an insurance I was already paying into for coverage on my car, and had continued to stay with that company for at least three terms of six months each. My coverage was standard for any auto insurance, and I have proven by the insurance companies own doctors that I am not faking anything. So why do they even question how a chiropractor can help me? Your ankles support your whole body, and can take a lot, but they are still connected to the rest of your body as well.

The Doctors

So I got to go to the lake this weekend for a bass fishing tournament. Being any where near water is my absolute favorite, but when you compile that with trees, wildlife, and great people; well that is the icing on the cake. It was my current boyfriends family event and just like the previous year, it was wonderful. My son took first place in the youth tournament; I was so proud. We have been working on getting him over some fears of things and this was a big thing for him because we told him if he wanted to be in the tournament he would have to bait his own hook and get used to touching fish, which he did after some patience. My other half won Biggest Bass, and the only fish I caught was before the tournament and didn't count. :( LOL! It was the biggest fish I have ever caught though. It was some where in the range of 10-15 inches. (We didn't measure it.) It was nice to be able to get out of the house for the weekend, since the only times I really get out are when I have doctors appointments. I don't really feel I can do the things I want anymore because the pain can hit bad at any time, and I would have to go home anyway. Why should I ruin everyone's fun because of the pain I will have to live with for the rest of my life? Having the right doctors on your side is very important in these situations. I tell people all the time, “Interview your doctor”. They live off of their patients, and we are those people. There so many doctors in the world now, and we have so many to choose from, even on an HMO. You just have to be willing to do the leg work, and most aren't. I started with a Medicaid doctor.

 I thought that since my son and I were both on Medicaid through the State of Michigan I would have to go to a Medicaid doctor. It was three days after we got home that got in to see him. I seen this doctor twice and both times I was not happy with his bedside manor. He didn't seem to care; I was just another low class, Medicaid patient getting free medical from the state. He didn't stop and think that I was a single mother, working full time, getting NO child support from the father, and just getting by. And now I had a broken ankle and was going to be out of work for at least three months.

  He did not go through what I would have thought were normal procedures for this kind of thing, like an MRI, or a complete work-up since I had just been in an accident that was bad enough to fracture my ankle and I might have other things wrong with me, like a concussion, or what about simply following up with the hospital I was at in Ohio? None of this was done, so I starting looking for a lawyer after the first visit.

  I have to admit, for anyone who knows me and may be reading this, I am not the best patient. I have expectations, and if you do not meet them, you are no longer a part of my life. If I feel you are not giving me what I need as my doctor, I tend to get a little, oh,.....lets say, anxious. When I get like that, I tend to feel sorry for those who have to see my facial expressions. They look nasty from what I am told. After I called Sam Bernstein, yes, literally, I found out that I didn't have to stick with a medicaid doctor and I could choose whomever I wanted. So I called the doctors office I trusted most, and even though I had not been to his office in years, they remembered me and made sure Doctor Wright got my message.

 I simply asked him for a great ankle specialist because I was in an accident and fractured my ankle. They called me back and told me he recommended Doctor Schram. He has been my doctor ever since. This man has a wonderful bedside manor, looks at you as the human you are, is understanding, and thorough. He asked to be told my whole story up until him, and then started to do all the things I thought a doctor should do. He explained that he did not want to do an MRI yet either because it was too early to tell anything and the swelling was still too much at that time. (He explained why; he didn't just say no.) He put on my second real cast, took a bunch of x-rays, and told me to be patient because this was going to take a while. This was how I was going to spend the rest of my summer. Having patience and waiting. I am usually good at these things, but this was a completely different story. I was going to be in the new cast for at least another six more weeks, and then, depending on the fracture, I was to move to a walking cast. Dr. Schram answered all my questions and understood my fears and tried not to make them worse. He knew that stress of anything could be a bad thing, and did not want to cause me any unnecessary worries. So he answered my questions, and kept it at that, and tried to keep me from expanding the thoughts that would creep into my head from my knowledge of the human body.  

At The Hospital

Ahhhh, so finally a small break in the weather and look what your eyes got to feast on. The exploding feeling in my leg that has plagued me all week has finally died down with the humidity. I am finding that there are different pains that come with the different weather patterns. I do not like that. Constant change is not a favorite of mine because it has shadowed my life on so many things. I get but small breaks in between each major change and the rebuild process that follows. I figure this is the same for most and it is normal. This change shows that when the humidity is bad my leg feels like it is swelling from the bone and pushes through all the tendons and muscles and tissues through to the skin and when it reaches the skin it is stopped. It builds but doesn’t push through, and only looks slightly swelled from the outside. On the outside is feels ice cold to the touch. When the humidity comes down it returns and isolates to the bone. This is a more focused pain and they are sharper and more like the lighting bolt feeling. Those are the ones that take your breath away but are easier to breathe through. A very large contradiction, but it is what it is. From what I have been told throughout this whole ordeal is that everything depended on how the bone and joint were set after the accident happened. However in my case all that was done “beautifully” and the bone set so well that even on x-rays you can barely see the fracture, which brings me back to the story.

When we got to the hospital it was just your normal procedures and policies getting information and asking questions and having x-rays and pumping pain medications. The people at the hospital were very nice and seemed to be on top of their game. I did not have to wait long before having the x-rays done and being told that I had a fractured Tibia. Now I have always been told that having a bone fractured was worse then having it broke. It weakens the bone and leaves it more susceptible to breaking down the road. So I figured I was screwed right from the get-go. They gave me the option of staying and having an MRI done there or going home and having it done at home. Well, at that point all I wanted was to be somewhere familiar and comfortable, and I do not feel that in a hospital. So they started the release process. They set my leg from the knee down. The guy doing the set had to push on the bottom of my foot to set it properly and that sucked horribly. The pain almost put me out. Once it was set they gave me prescriptions, had me sign some papers and sent me on my way. My ex wheeled us out of the hospital one at a time after stopping to eat in the cafeteria. I called my insurance company as soon as I got outside of the hospital and tried to make a claim, but their computers were down and I would have to try again the next day. We had to wait for my ex's cousin to come back and get us. He went with the van on the flat bed back home and was going to drive back down to get us. When he did arrive it did not feel like long until we were back in our area. I asked to stop and get my prescriptions filled since I knew it would probably be at least a half an hour before I would have them in hand, which we did, and then my ex drove to my house to drop me off so he could take his cousin and his wife back to their car so they could drive another hour back to their area. My ex said it would only take a few to drop them off and then he would be back with my pain medications.

By the time my ex got back from dropping them off two hours had past. I was going in and out from the pain and was pissed. I couldn't go to the bathroom without help, couldn't get up at all without help at that point and I had never felt so helpless in my life. I still felt the drugs in my system, they just weren't working on what they were supposed to be working on. They were simply making me stupid and too weak to move. The pills I was taking my body usually rejected anyway, so I didn't know what was going on in my body. So began my relationship with the doctors.