EasterBunny

Hello,
My monicker is EaterBunny. My writing this to folks with similar experiences and perhaps sympathetic ears is a rather cathartic experience. I've had a rough four months; four months I'm sure many of you can relate to.
I am a Special Education teacher at a high school in the Lone Star State of Texas. I have discovered just what a 'lonely little star" the WC system can make you feel to be.
Feb. 28th, one of my student's (a deaf, blind, MR teenager, who is approximately 5'11' and approximately 180 lbs.) accidentally fell on top of me. I was in the process of helping him up off of the gym floor, so that he could continue our six walking laps within the gym (on a drizzly, cold day). I had him almost completely up, when I was distracted by the overtly aggressive misbehaviors of one of my other students with one of my adult assistants. While offering advice to my assistant on how to appropriately deal with and redirect the young man's aggressive behaviors at that moment, the student I was helping up (who had begun a rocking motion to and fro from one foot to the other) decided to drop back down to the floor. I was not expecting it and because of the precarious rocking motion he was in, both of us lost our balance and fell awkwardly and hard onto the gymnasium floor together. He landed on top of me and my body was twisted at an odd angle. It did not make for a good combination. As a result, I wound up with a painful lower back injury.
The doctor's charts describe it as a separation of the lumbar vertebrae, causing a bulging of the disc, which has also added compression to my sciatic nerve. I am in persistent low to high grade pain (depending upon what I am attempting to do) which radiates from my lower back and into the entirity of my left hip, thigh and leg. I have a noticeable limp. In fact, my family members have taken to calling me Hop-a-Long-Cassidy. In my right leg, I have constant tingling and numbness running down the outside of my leg and overlaps the top part of my foot. I have four numb toes and the inside of my right tow, and a small protion of the upper pad of my right foot is now also numb. The numbness has steadily increased with the passage of time and my sleeping habits have been adversely effected.
Despite a few early glitches with the WC folks, I have been diligently working with everything prescribed to me by the doctors and PT specialists since I had to leave my position at the high school March 27th. The Accident occurred Feb. 28th, but after reporting to the school nurse and my principal regarding what had happened, I thought that I had not done anything more serious than strain my back, skin my knees and elbows, and given time I would be fine. So, I continued to work with the children. I was in constant pain and moved around with a significant limp from that day forward, but I swallowed a few ibuprphen and went about the business at hand. I was raised in the country, and as a result I have a high pain threshold, and strong work ethic.
During Music Time, March 27th, one of my female student's ran up behind me and playfully grabbed me by the neck. Due to my poor physical condition and the pain her playful action caused me, I lost my balance and we both landed on the floor together. I realized immediately afterwards, that the room was not a safe place for me to be in order to recover. I had developed close and loving relationships with all of my students (they are three to five year old children menatally and emotionally, running around in teenage bodies) and as a result would always be in jeopardy and could not give them and my assistants my best work and diligence while in constant pain. Due to those problematic realities, I have been off of work since March 27th.
Even though my sister kept telling me to get a lawyer, I didn't. I really have grown to have little regard for the legal system because in being around friends and acquaintances who are members of the legal field, I came to feel that the majority of them are vultures who prey on and grow wealthy from the problems of the weak while making themselves and the rich more powerful and wealthier to boot. They weren't the high minded idealists I had expected them to be. Most of them were cynical birds of prey.
So, I didn't consider getting one until the end of May, when without warning, I did not receive my benefits cheque. I instead, received a Notice of Diputed Issues Issues and Refusal to Pay Benefits form letter. Needless to say I was quite dismayed. Little did I know that my education regarding the Workman's Comp. system was just beginning.
After calling my Adjuster to find out why I had not received a cheque and what the meaning of the form really was, I discovered some unbelievable information. It appears that the fine legislators of the state of Texas passed a new law last year which states that any and all employees of school districts are not to be paid income benefits during the three summer months. Anyone who knows school teacher knows that more than half of their summers are given to Continued Education workshops to maintain their accreditation standards. Teacher also have their pay cheques spread throughout the twelve months of the year in order to avoid any financial difficulties during the summer months.
It does not seem to matter to them that I am now a single woman, living from pay cheque to pay cheque. That their arbitrary decision means that I, and anyone else in my predicument, cannot pay their bills for three months with no income.
I found myself in a catch twenty-two situation. I cannot seek another job, because my physical health will not allow it, and because if I did, I would lose all of my WC benefits. I injured my health and wellbeing while giving my students the best academic, occupationally and physically therapuetic, creative and loving environment possible. I am offended by the outrageous unjustness of a decision like this. Everyone, but school employees are paid WC benefits throughout the year for as long as they are allowed. Only school employees have been discriminated against.
As a result, I found an attorney on the internet who claimed to have a good record with WC cases. So, June rolled by and I paid my rent, car note and all of my bills off with my savings, while the lawyers were supposed to be working on finding a way for me to receive my benefits. I continued my treatments and therapies, but my physical health was not improving, and I still clomped around like Hop-a-Long Cassidy.
July came, and I knew that my savings would not stretch out over all of my bills, so I took out a high interest loan and took the bull by the horns with the lawyer I had been given by the firm I had contracted with. It appears that if you can come up with the employment information from a place you have worked at the previous summer, that you can use that record of employment pay, and receive it for the same months during the summer that you need it. The summer before the school term that I was injured, I had worked during the day as a tutor, and arts and crafts teacher at a western horsemanship camp, and a little mom and pop store/cafe in the evenings right across campus. I was paid in cash for the small amount of tutoring that I did and gave the money I had made teaching arts and crafts to the young people at the three week camp to a friend of mine who was having financial difficulties. As a result, the monies I made at the mom and pop store/cafe were the only employment record I could count on.
So, I made all of the necessary calls and got the owner's accountants to fax my lawyer the necessary documents, only to be told later that month that they would have to write another letter saying that they were planning on hiring me back for the next summer. The problem with that was that the owner of the store had liquidated and rented out his building to a store-chain. Since they no longer existed and the owner instead had decided to open up an insurance business, there was no one who could write that letter.
End of July is when the lawyers gave me that delightful news. I made partial payments on all of my bills and was forced to take out a high interest loan to make it through August, until my benefits are to be renewed August 21st. I was not evicted due to a compassionate landlord who is willing to work with me just this once. My vehicle is under threat of repossession, and I have bill collectors calling me daily. All of this stress and anxiety inducement entered my life over these past three months, and has not done much to aid my recovery.
Then, when I received another bill from the WC folks informing me of further charges from my lawyer, who was not supposed to be receiving any of my benefit monies if they did not help me get my income benefits over the summer; I balked. How dare they think its ethical to take money from me for a failed job. Money I desparately need to get out of the financial abyss the WC system had cast me into. So, I withdrew, this week, from their services, and went about finding out about the processes of a Benefit Review in order to dispute their right to take the 25% out of each of my weekly pay cheques. After finding out that, after meeting approval of all of the paperwork that I would have to fill out, that an Omsbudsman (who works for the WC system and insurance companies whose lobbyists and lawyers helped to pass the unjust law against the workers rights of school employees) would be assigned to help me, but that the hearing wouldn't take place for another twenty-one days. And that I could only dispute the last bill given to me because the fifteen day deadline dates for the previous bills had already passed. I sat down in dispair and cried. Then I called my sisters and they emailed me over twenty sites to contact about all of these injustices against working class individuals by uncaring and inhumane systems.
I have already been crippled by one of my students by shere accident. Then the WC and legal systems over the past three months have managed to damage me financially, mentally and emotionally as well. And we say that the US is a great, technological mecca of healing. A mecca where money is the god that runs the machinery, leaving some folks to be ground up like hamburger meat (since I'm from Texas, perhaps I should make that barbeque brisket). Where is the justice - the benefit - the compensation - in systems such as these ?

Sincerely,

EasterBunny