During all the comp crap...

I hid out a lot.
Slept as much as I could.
Took my anti anxiety medication.
Spent HUGE amounts of time utterly stressed, exhausted, angry, feeling helpless.

My job became a haven. I have always been able to leave my stresses and worries outside the doors of the school. I'm not sure why, but my theory (and I'm stickin' to it) is that once I've entered the building, events are under my control. There are small surprises, but usually they're good ones. The kids make me smile. They're a good influence. :)

Also, since I started this line of work, I've had a deep conviction that I needed to present the same face to the kids every day. To be the same calm, steady, straightforward and trustworthy person they count on. To leave my own garbage outside work, no matter what's going on and be there for them. In a few cases, I spend more waking hours during the week with them than their parents do. I want that time to be predictable and have my program be a place where they always feel safe and cared for. I want to be day care that actually CARES.

It wasn't an option to be crabby and out of sorts just because my knees hurt and the work comp fucks were dragging their feet and had suggested that I wasn't hurt at all.

I took a lot of Excedrin. I'm sure between the narcotics at night and the Excedrin during the day, my poor liver still hates me.

I mentioned once before that I visualize my liver lying at the bottom of my abdominal cavity like a wounded manatee, occasionally weakly waving a flipper and sort of lumpishly trying to survive.

I hope my poor liver recovers.

I didn't discuss the case unless forced to with my husband or the rest of my family, knowing on a deep level that talking about it would make me feel worse rather than better.

Eric, wanting to protect me and take care of me, came across angry and demanding when he asked me about what was going on. He was angry. Not at me, of course. He had said from the beginning that I needed to turn stuff over to him so he could make phone calls and get some results.

If you're a man, you know about trying to protect your woman... and if you're a woman who's been lucky enough to get a good guy, you know, too. He wanted to take care of me and I didn't think there was a whole lot he could do.

He saw me hurting. He walked along with the shopping cart in the grocery store while I drove the scooter. He heard me say ouch in the middle of the night. He saw me get up in the morning and hold on to the walls until the knee warmed up enough to move. He saw how bad my balance was. He saw me come home from work and sit. Sit. Sit. I did nothing besides work, eat and sleep. I managed to sort of make sure we had clean clothing, but that's about the extent of my domesticity.

He wanted his wife back. And like a wounded animal, I wanted to hide in a corner and bite anyone who came to bother me. :)

I'm ashamed that I was actually a pretty crappy wife and mom during this time. I wasn't able to give 100% of me to anything, there was that percentage that was always focused on what hurt and how long until I could lie down and rest again.

My friends asked me about the case, and I would say a little about it, but mostly tried to compartmentalize the comp stuff and ignore it.

Every time it got brought up I wanted to tell people that 'I don't wanna talk about it,' but didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. They were only asking because they cared. I knew that. Also, I hadn't sorted out my own feelings and been able to ponder events and things enough to be coherent.

So there was a lot of anger and resentment, too, and no one to share it with at 2 AM. In the general scheme of things, my pain was fairly small. But to me of course, it was large. It took over a great deal of my existence. There wasn't a time that the knee didn't hurt, all that varied was the degree of pain. There was fear, too. What if I can't get it fixed? What if I never find anyone to LISTEN???So eleven months without being able to sleep through the night, limping through work, taking narcotics to just REST a little, missing ALL the summer field trips with the kids, and just being exhausted from all of it took a lot of energy.

And the left knee has never healed properly. I was getting acupuncture treatments, which did help me temporarily, but the left knee did its share of burning and aching during the night and when the right one wasn't waking me up, the left one did instead.

And when Dr. Pain decided to cave to pressure from work comp and sign off on the case, the PT and acupuncture that at least made things bearable for a time just... stopped.

And trying to just do my regular work when I was in constant pain was really difficult.

I was pissed off because my doctors would not listen to me. I was angry beyond angry that the system that's supposed to protect injured workers just didn't.

I knew from the beginning that I'd done something permanent to the knee, that it wasn't a 'soft tissue injury' at all, which is what was being said.

It's funny, because the doctors paid for by work comp SAID I had a tear in the meniscus. The dissenting opinion was from my chosen doctor, and that's the opinion they went with. Saving money, ya know.

Dr. Pain, the doctor I chose for the 2nd opinion regarding the left knee had written me off. Pressure from work comp and the fact that he wasn't willing to stand up and override or even say anything contrary to the opinion of my orthopedic doctor.

Dr. Slice and Dice, who'd taken such good care of my shoulder and done the surgery on the left knee had stopped listening to me early. I don't want to say that he caved to pressure from work comp. My guess actually is that he did not. But the result was the same, he didn't listen to me and I knew he wasn't going to help me.

My own doctor, Dr. Dirtball, did not touch my knees. She did no examination of them whatsoever, telling me that she didn't want to compromise my case in any way. Smart. Greatly appreciated now that I understand the legal shit a little better.

My mom finally gave up asking me about it when I told her that I promise to give her news if there IS any, but to please stop asking me about it, it was driving me bugfuck.

I didn't want to talk about it.
Now I'm ready to.