Resignation and the Sounds of Silence.

So I talked to my attorney last week.

Once again, the comp insurer is willing to settle. Of course the first thing they want is for me to resign from my job.

When my attorney told me that, I said (this is as close as I can recall), "You know, I understand that it's not anything personal. These people don't know me or my work ethic or who I am or how good I am at what I do. As far as they're concerned, I'm just another scammer. The fact that I refused to take time off with this injury and have been working through some horrendous pain for eight months seems to be forgotten, but whatever. I'm not about to quit my job. You can tell him to kiss my ass."

She laughed and said, "I don't think when comp insurers do this they have any idea how insulting it is. It will give me great pleasure to tell them, 'no'. "

In a conversation with one of my imaginary friends on the internet I learned that what they're trying to do is called retribution, really. And it's not legal. Unless they're offering me permanent disability payments, that is. I don't know if they were offering that or not. Doesn't matter, since I didn't ask. The money is not the point. Never has been.

But it pisses me off that 'resign from your job' was even on the table.

And when this whole mess is over, I plan to write as scathing a letter as I can and send it to the appropriate parties. I'll publish here on my blog, too, and use the real names of the comp insurer, the people I've dealt with, and load it with what I really think of their fucking comp system.

I swear, I don't know how they sleep at night. Bunch of jerks.

I know you're probably going to laugh at this, but until I got injured over and over and over, I really thought work comp was there to protect injured workers.

But this lesson goes along beautifully with the whole 'learn all your life' thing I talk about.

A person never stops learning, really.

It's just that some lessons suck.

Like the lesson of losing my voice. Not sure what I'm supposed to learn from it, but really? Cosmic forces... whoever or whatever form you take? I am really just about done with the whole quiet life. Really.

I can't speak above a whisper. And sometimes? Trying to whisper? Doesn't work. Nothing comes out.

The joke needs to be over. Trying to work where I work without a voice SUCKS.

The kids NEED to be familiarized with all the rules (there aren't that many, most of them have to do with safety in one form or another) but it's difficult if not impossible to 'catch them in the act' so to speak. I can't raise my voice. And while I do get up and go talk to them as soon as I can, sometimes they're doing something that really worries me. Like the two little K girls who thought it was okay to run on the cafeteria benches. Repeatedly. Ack.

On Tuesday morning, Loren's* mom told me that her sister in law just got her voice back after a whole month after suffering similar symptoms. A MONTH????
ACK!! I'd be speechless about it, but I already am speechless anyway.

::sigh::

So I went to see Dr. Dirtball on Tuesday. No, wait. Wednesday. Got one of those emergency slots by calling at 8 on the dot and whispering loudly into the phone.

Then the 20 something office assistant was utterly flummoxed when I said no to the scales. I proceeded into the exam room while she all but wrung her hands in despair.

"I am going to have to check this!"
She didn't add "Oh dear oh dear!" but her demeanor did.

She flittered and fluttered out of the room to the front desk after carefully closing the door behind her, and within about 10 seconds was back.

"Okay. You don't have to weigh."

"I know," I said as sweetly as I could.

She looked at me like I was a lunatic. :) I had to smile a little. It was sorta humorous.

Then I talked with my doctor.

She said that what's going on with me, after the negative strep test is probably viral, and that the voice leaving coinciding with the sore throat also points to a viral thing. Meaning that antibiotics would be ineffective against it.

But. Because of the visible inflammation (and she suggested there might be some inflammation where she can't see it around the corner down there), my sore knee that there's "nothing wrong with" and my sore feet, she suggested a course of Prednisone. It doesn't really sound like a whole lot of fun, but right now I am willing to try. Because if my voice isn't back in a week, I have to see an ENT and have the nose cam. Which I've done before. And HATED. And hope to never have to do again.

Keep your fingers crossed, willya?