Workers Comp Help
Crushed Hand In Workplace Accident
I was a cake decorator and had only worked 3 months. I went into the freezer to get the cakes needed for the orders I would be doing. The cakes were in big metal cabinets (crestcores), I moved 5 of them out of the freezer to get all the cakes needed for the day's orders.
The freezer was pretty crowded and those crestcores were full and I am not a big woman to man handle them around (they weigh around 75 to 100 lbs. when they are full) I was shoving the last one in the freezer and everything was really crowded. I crushed my right hand between two crestcores. In the process of jerking and fighting with the crestcores, I got my right hand free and got my left hand caught, I jerked it free, cutting my finger and banging my left elbow pretty hard. I was bleeding and went out to the bakery part and the head baker helped me get it cleaned up and a bandaid on it.
This happened about 5:30 a.m. and they did not send me to the Occupational Health until after 12:00. I was treated and released, with instructions not to get my hand wet for a week and not to grip anything. I was sent home for the week. This happened on Friday before Christmas. I suffered all weekend and through Christmas, and was at Occupational Health the first thing the day after Christmas.
There was a different Dr., he took the time to listen and has tried every since Dec. 2000, to help me get treatment and some help with this problem.
To make a long story short, I was basically denied treatment until July 2001 and finally received some worker's comp in the same time period, they paid back wages, to the tune of $47.33 per week and it supposedly was all the back wages, which of course, the lawyer took his cut. Then they sent me a few checks for 47.33 and then cut it to 37.33 and then just stopped paying. then they paid for about a month and then cut it off again stating they paid as soon as they received the C84(something like that) they had been turned in from the first day of injury and when the Dr. gave me one, I took it to the store office.
They have run me thru the mill with "their" Dr.s' opinions and sending me to all these places, I have no idea where I am going.
They don't give a damn that I am in constant pain and that if I did not have a husband, I would have been homeless a long time ago. I am currently going to a psychiatrist and went to see one of theirs.
The only end to this constant hassle is just to crawl off and lick my wounds, and they are probably hoping that I will just be locked up in a padded cell. This mess has been going on almost a year and a half with no end in sight. All I wanted was to be restored to the physical and mental state that I was in when I went to work at this company. Is that too much to ask??? They are still referring to my accident as an alleged injury.