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

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.  

The Concert Trip

OK, so I already mentioned that I was in a car accident, but I feel the need to explain the beginning as well as how I was before the accident. I think it will better paint a picture of why I am having so many problems, not just physically, but mentally as well.

Before May 24^th 2010 I was in full steam. I was a single mother busting her butt every day doing the things that take two people to do. I had a fast-paced full time job as an insurance agent at a financial firm that I had intended on making a career, I owned my house and car, and I took care of it all. I had very little help, but what I did receive was from my sons family. His grandparents and father took care of him while I was at work and they took him every other weekend so I could have time to breathe. At the time of the accident I was in an uncomfortable relationship that was on the rocks, and all I wanted was to go to the concert we had planned for a year to go too. It was a two day concert in Columbus, Ohio and it had a few specific bands I had wanted to see for a very long time. The trip was already paid for and I was not about to give up my well deserved vacation. It was only supposed to be for four days and when we got back I intended on putting all the focus I could into my career and son. If the relationship continued and got better,... great, but I was not going to kill myself if it didn't. That is another long story, but lets just say I was done being used as a door mat. So on to the concert.

Rock on the Range was the concert and I could not wait. I had been making some wrong life decisions and was using the concert as a way to relax and prepare before putting my head down and getting into some serious work. And that is exactly what I did. I have not gone to many concerts and I was getting to see Rob Zombie who is one of my favorite people, he is so creative. I got to crowd surf for the first time, and now last, and got to do some other things I have always wanted. (Being a single mom means you don't get to do much of the things you want too, so every little thing seems more important even in the smallest fractions.) I was out of Michigan, where I am from, away from home, no little man to worry about, so I just let loose as much as I could. For two days straight I walked around a stadium full of people from all walks of life, drinking beer on two of the hottest days of what was the beginning of summer, and at every turn there was a crowd standing around a stage with a live band I have been longing to see play.      

 You see, I was a singer and still am, but I have never been able to get out like my friends and see the bands, so, I was in one instead. So seeing these bands really meant a lot to me. I felt I was surrounded by kindred spirits. I will be honest, I do not remember a lot of the concert now, but I remember the parts I wanted to go for, and that still makes me smile to this day. It makes as a good memory to the beginning of what some days I feel was the beginning of the end of me. On Monday morning we packed everything up and headed for home.
     

We had just crossed over the point where US-23 turns into OH-15. I had been nodding off in the passenger seat of my ex's Ford full conversion van. I am only 5'4”, so to put my feet up on the dash was just the perfect length for me. I didn't have to scoot down to reach, and I could still stay seat-belted. My flip-flops were off, and I had not been nodding long when I seen this car acting funny up ahead. It was in the cross-over portion of the median and I watched it pull into it's spot in the median, back out again like it was going to head in the opposite direction, almost got run over by a semi before it pulled back into the median, and then pulled out in front of us and just sat there. There were only two lanes on our side of the median, and he was blocking one of them. The ex was a semi driver his self, so I felt that he would do the right thing, but what I thought would have been the right thing is not what happened. As we approached I asked my ex what he planned to do, I was scared, but stayed smart. I looked behind us and only saw one car back in the far distance so I knew he could stop and not cause bigger problems, but he did have a chance to keep going and go around the car, but the ladder would only work if the person in the car did not move. Needless to say, as we started to go around the front of the car, it moved and positioned itself dead center in front of the van. I now know that a full conversion van is a little more then two car doors wide. I watched the whole thing in slow motion and am still haunted by the visions of it. But that is just the beginning of my life with RSD.