Brent McGillis: Lost Days of disability now permeate my summer

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Lost Days of disability now permeate my summer

 I managed to smoke enough herb to get up the necessary bravado to finish cutting the lawn of the house we live in, thus finally finish cutting the lawn for the house for the first time this summer. The WCB has decided that according to the home assessment they did, that I do not need any help cutting the lawn. I wish that were true, the fact of the matter is that when ever I am forced to do work around the house, that is when I get injured. Thus as a side effect of lifting the heavy garbage bags of cut lawn clipping I have thrown my back out again.

 It has taken the entire summer so far to complete cutting the lawn so far this year, that is the reality of living in my body. I had asked the woman who did the assessment if there were any way in which I could get somebody to cut the lawn. She never denied nor confirmed whether or not that would become a reality in the near future or not, but I did so given the fact that when ever I pick up any kind of tool around the house that vibrates it immediately triggers nerve pain from the lifetime of nerve damage done working in the construction industry. Construction is hard on a man's body, I have worked most of my adult life in construction, all types of construction and as a direct side effect of this career choice is the sheer volume of nerve damage I have caused my own body because of the trades I worked in spanning decades.

 Permanent nerve damage is caused by vibratory tools that we used on a daily basis in bridge construction, super structure construction and across a wide range of commercial and industrial buildings that we worked on over the decades. I have used heavy duty air hammers for demo work, large air impact guns up to 1 inch drive impacts that will leave your body buzzing after hanging on to one all day long. One of the jobs of putting up super-structures is that sooner or later you are going to have to impact and torque the structure to spec, and that is going to expose your body to permanent long term nerve damage because of the constant stream of vibrations that these tools emit. In the pre-engineered building industry, it is very common to get stuck tightening down the entire building with electric powered impact guns. For the pre-eng industry the cummulative effect on your nerves in your hands and arms is permanent and you will develop long term side effects from using impact guns on say Butler buildings that are put together with what we used to call "honeybees", they are grade 8 hardened fastners that help the Butler building withstand a category 5 hurricane. For the other pre-engineered buildings you would typically being using industrial quality impact drivers that will break your wrist before they will run out of torque. After many years of using these industrial impact drivers your hands and forearms will experience long term permanent nerve damage. For me, this means that when I am forced to pick up a vibrating tool, like a Mastercrap lawn mower, that sends vibrations up the handle; I will be stricken with uncontrollable shaking and tremors that course up and down my forearms while trying to simply cut the lawn.

While we are on the subject of nerve damage, I would like to know precisely WHY the WCB of Alberta has never sent me to a neurologist to examine the extent of the nerve damage in my back? Why has the WCB now spent 6 months claiming that they are going to help me, when in fact they have not referred me to 1 single Orthopedic Spinal specialist. If they are so damned committed to fixing injured workers, don't they think that maybe the guy with the most amount of schooling and expertise in this field; then WHY does the WCB continue BLOCKING my access to a specialist?
The WCB claims manager claims that I am not being blocked from accessing a specialist, but the REFUSE to refer me to the specialist that I have previously requested on multiple occasions?

 Chronic pain is here again and I will continue this blog later...more to come. Thks for ur patience.

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