Posts Tagged ‘insurance’
Today I had to meet with a gal from Workman’s Comp for a vocational evaluation. This assessment was to see what my skills and limitations are. There were a lot of questions about my hobbies and activities before the fall and what of that I can do now. It is this lady’s job to take what learned from me today and the doctors notes and go out and look for me a job that I can do within those limitations. After an hour and a half I broke down and cried when telling her my frustration at not being able to do the things I did before and not being able to drive a truck anymore. Trying to explain to someone that has never driven a truck what it is like to do and then to loose it is not an easy task. I know many of you have heard and read me talk about how trucking in more than just a job, it is a way of life and a life style. The nomadic nature of drivers in ingrained in them so deep that it becomes part of who they are and of who I am. Over the last couple on months as I have started school and had to try to integrate myself into the “real world”, I have had days that I hate my life. I have had days that I am angry at the world. I have had days that I ask why me and want to crawl into a whole and hid from all these crazy people that just don’t get me. I try to hang on to that fact that now I am chasing another dream I have had for several years. If not for the fall I am not sure that I would have taken the step to go to school and try to start another career in radio. I remind myself that I am smart, personable, and that the only one holding me back from chasing this dream is me. But it doesn’t always work. Even though I am doing well in my classes, I think I have at least one A, several high B’s and a C, I get scared. I wonder if I can really do this. All of this came out when talking with this lady today. I think that this meeting is another slap in the face that this is really happening, I am not going to back to truck driving, and that hurts.
The thing that made it even worse was the meeting with my lawyer after the lady left the office. My doctor has give me a 6% medical impairment rating. To get a rough dollar number as to what that means for a settlement we have that the 200 weeks that are allowed for a scheduled member, multiply that by the 6% (which equal 12 weeks) and then multiply that result by what I am getting per week from AIG for workman’s comp. That comes to $4787 for each wrist. Shane, my lawyer, says that it what I can count on getting at the very least. But that total will be multiplied by 4 or 5 because of the impact the injury has had on my life. So if we go with the hopeful number of 5, that total is $23935 per wrist. That is a total of $47871. Does that seem fair for how much of my life has been impacted by this injury? These are just base figures. Shane say he is going to shoot for 100 week times what I am getting weekly to start off with. That still only comes out to be $39893 per wrist for a total of $79786. Of course, he gets 25% of what ever settlement I get. This news did not go over well with me. I was really expecting more. I don’t want enough money to live off of the rest of my life, I just want enough that I don’t have to worry about how I am going to live while I got to college the next four years. Shane told me that workman’s comp laws are really not set up to deal with severely injured people. they figure that if you are severely injured, you will be going on social security disability. when I asked him I qualified for that, he said that they really are not set up for a partial permanent disability. He says that I do have a winnable case, but it would be a fight to get it. When I asked him if a lawyer would even touch it is it was going to be such a fight, he said they would, but that I didn’t want to start that until after the workman’s comp case is done.
So, I sit in limbo once again, not knowing what is going to happen and how I am going to survive the next few years while I try ti finish college and start a new career. But as much as there are days that I really want to give up, I am just not that kind of person. I am a survivor and a fighter. One way or another, I will adapt and overcome!!
Written By: Walter Twohorses
Correspondent
After 20 years of being a member of what truck drivers call the I40 social club, (I ran I40 a lot), I came off the road to get married, settle down and try to have what society considers to be a “normal life”. I found a small company that hauled limestone but it did not pay much. So I took the job and kept looking. Not long after that I found Trimac and decided that the oil fields were where I needed to be to make the real money.
In July 2007 I started training where I learned how to run the pumps, measure the oil and several other required duties. After two weeks I was turned loose with my own truck. It was a ‘96 Freightliner FLD that was originally an OTR truck and had been converted to run the oil fields. It was probably the biggest piece of crap I have ever driven and should have been “retired” a long time ago. I suspect that instead of buying new equipment, they would purchase older, worn out trucks from other branches of the Trimac company to show a profit and saved the company some money.
I drove this worn out Freightliner for a year with the air-ride seat bottoming out an average of 3 to 4 times a day. The impact to my spine took it’s toll over that amount of time.
One day I got out of the truck to hook up my hose. When I stepped down it felt like someone had stuck a very sharp knife in my back and I went down. I could not move. Other drivers at the pumping station helped me get up because I could not do it on my own. I have never experienced pain like that before and it scared the hell out of me. It was about half an hour before I could move. The other drivers helped me get back into my truck and I drove myself the 35 miles back to the yard. Good thing I know how to float the gears because I could not push in the clutch due to the pain and weakness.
I took a couple of days off work thinking that maybe I had just strained some muscles. I was wrong! A few days later I was at the Greely Medical Clinic being pumped full of all kinds of pain killers. Two weeks later my boss called and asked me to come back to work. He did not want me to be a black mark on their safety record. I agreed to come back to modified duty. That meant driving truck from the yard to the truck wash every day. How much pain could that cause? Lots, because I did not last a week.
It was two months before I got my first workman’s comp check and medical treatment because my boss had told the insurance company, AIG, that I was back at work. It was another 3 to 4 months before I was sent to see a back specialist. This doctor gave me the news that my 20 year truck driving career was over. The L3, L4, L5 and S1 discs were damaged beyond repair. No words of anger can describe how I felt. I wrote that truck up for faulty equipment more times than I can count and it was ignored by Trimac.
From July to November 2007 I received regular workman’s comp checks and medical treatment. But all the doctors that AIG sent me to wanted to fill me full of pills, mostly naproxen, and cut on my back. I did not want an invasive surgery. In November they shut off the checks and medical treatment because I would not take a modified position in the Trimac office. I was also informed that if I did take the office job, I would have to pay back the company back for keeping my insurance premiums up to date. I felt like this company did not car a bit about me and my injury. Why would I want to work for a company that did not care about it’s employees?
In March 2009 I was given a disability rating of 15% by the doctors AIG had sent me to. With this rating, AIG began sending me $1000 every two weeks, but that did not last long. August 2009 they stopped payment when I went to an independent doctor and he gave me a disability rating of 26%. This makes me wonder if the first doctor was taking a pay off to keep the rating as low as possible.
I really liked this independent doctor because he seemed to understand Native people and agreed with my continuing the homeopathic treatment I had started on my own. This treatment included acupuncture, chiropractic treatments as well as spiritual help. But AIG had it’s own ideas about my treatment and send me to yet another doctor. Once again the doctor just wanted to push pills down my throat.
Being frustrated and jerked around as much as I have, I went off on the doctor at my last appointment. The police were called and he sent me to the psychiatric ward for observation to make sure I would not harm anyone or myself. The doctors there kept me for six hours then released me.
My lawyer in still in negotiations with AIG for a settlement and says that with this incident she is upping the amount. I still have a long road ahead of me in reaching a settlement with AIG. Because of the restrictions on my back, getting and holding a job is not an easy task. With AIG jerking me around as they are, I am in danger of loosing everything I have. I have already lost my Harley and my credit rating has been ruined.
