Brent McGillis: Trauma, the Curse of the Injured Worker

Monday, July 17, 2017

Trauma, the Curse of the Injured Worker

 This morning I awoke because I could feel how cold the house was, as a direct consequence of the cold chill that has fallen over the city as a result of the smoke wafting into Alberta from the B.C. Wildfires that gain momentum daily. On a morning like today my body is wracked in pain, from arthritis I suspect. My sciatica pain is especially debilitating this morning, as it courses down my left leg, a constant reminder of my disability. I have tried to immerse myself in any project that will help divert my attention away from my constant unending back pain.
 As I have told any physician who has ever seen me, chronic pain is just like it sounds, it is constant, it is unending and the fatigue it brings with it is a constant roadblock to completing any task around the house or otherwise. To the credit of my family and close friends it is by their good grace and helping hands that I am able to complete any tasks that I am challenged with. Usually one of them will show up just in the nick of time in order for me to complete what would seem to be very simple tasks for any person who is not disabled. This cycle of constantly relying on friends and family to arrive and help me out really stretches out any task I tackle around the house, I am eternally grateful for the generosity of those who surround me.

 As a general rule of thumb I tend to write on the days I am bedridden with pain. I cannot say that any spike in my chronic pain is what is responsible for my writing on my blog, but I can say that since I am laid up in bed on these days are the days that I typically will decide to post to my blog.
 I never started this blog to gain fame or profit in any way from the suffering of my fellow injured workers across the country, I started this blog to be a chronological account of my day to day challenges for the most part. Over the years I have tried to address many of the issues that seriously injured workers are faced with every day. I have tried to keep up to date and current on the daily developments in Workers Compensation legislation as it applies to all of us across Canada.
 For the majority of us as permanently disabled injured workers, the day to day demands of simply trying to live out our daily lives circumvents any political setbacks or advancements going on in the political spectrum of injured worker issues. I believe it would be fair to say that the majority of us as Seriously Injured Workers are simply too busy in trying to get daily tasks in life completed to immerse ourselves fully in the politics of Workers Compensation issues. I try to stay up to date, and to write when I feel that I have heard enough commentary from outside observers, that it is time for an injured worker to add some retrospect on the subject, and then I am compelled to comment. It is on one of these "lost days of summer", when I am confined to my bed that I consume news and commentary from across the globe.
 I recently attended an IME Physche assessment at the Workers Compensation Board. It is curious how my broken back has now turned into a brain injury. (Sic) I know that this observation is neither objective, nor likely helpful to my treatment of my broken back, but an interesting observation none the less. As a trauma sufferer I do not enter into these meetings with any kind of predetermined discrimination against the psychiatric community or the doctors who practice these medical arts. I don't know what is wrong with me, I don't know why I break down for no reason, I don't know why I can become quickly angered over Worker Compensation issues. It is something I live with everyday, and sometimes it haunts me. I have not been doing well since I had my assessment, it has brought back painful memories of all of the horrible things that happened to me in the last 11 and a half years. Those were not happy times or memories that we really did not discuss much. I found it both interesting and telling that the doctor observed that I have troubles with my short term memory. That can be true, especially in times of stress but I find it more telling that our discussion carefully walked around the outer perimeter of the responsibilities of the Workers Compensation Board. Asking me if there is anything else encompasses such a mammoth degree of data and events, such a question is overwhelming and just like when I fell, such a question only provides a mental canvas of perplexing data whiteout. I have made 189 posts since the Genesis of this blog, the only reason that number is not double is because most days I am incapable of writing as I am too overcome with pain to focus my attention on writing.
 Is there anything else? Yes, ergo my blog.
 From my perspective as a patient observer, I found it very telling that the Psychiatrist never touched on the issue of discrimination by the Workers Compensation Board and the fact that they deliberately appointed a Claims Manager with clearly racist opinions to be MY claims manager. The avoidance of mentioning this underlying culture of discrimination, I believe was no accident, but rather a signal of the underlying rot within the AB WCB. I found it very concerning that the Psychiatrist never touched on what happened to me when I was in the hospital at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in 2006, and what Dr. Leslie DeLima did to me to ensure that I would never be able to claim any kind of treatment for my neck injury I suffered as a result of landing flat on my back off of a steel rafter in the spring of 2006. Those are the kinds of flash backs that haunt me the most, knowing that the Workers Compensation Board still continues to this day to deny responsibility for AMBUSHING me by directing Dr. Leslie DeLima to physically attack me while I was drugged and in physical and mental shock as a patient of the Royal Alexandra Hospital.

Knowing that there is NOTHING I can do to ensure that this kind of horrific medical abuse is continuing to this day at the Royal Alexandra Hospital with the full support of the AB WCB and the Alberta Health Services keeps me up at night; I am terrified that one day I will be returned to the "WCB Hacks and Quacks Hospital" in downtown Edmonton. I fear that if I am ever returned to the Royal Alex Hospital, that the racist tendencies of this hospital will ensure that I never leave that institute alive. I believe that the only way I will ever exit that hospital again is: with a toe-tag, feet first.
 I believe that the Royal Alexandra Hospital working in conjunction with the AB Health Services has colluded to provide a toxic environment of racism towards indigenous people who have become injured at work by no fault of their own. To me after all of these years battling many different govt agencies, often numerous simultaneously that there is an underlying rot that exists across all platforms and agencies withing the AB Govt. In my mind this Govt racism and dysfunctional ROT has been fostered and spread to the Federal level when Stephen Harper deliberately targeted and promoted racist attitudes towards indigenous persons during his entire tenure in government. I said that years ago, and I believe history has shown this to be true. Everybody has known for decades that Alberta is the most racist province in Canada, that is no secret and never has been.
 This is why the psychiatric assessment by the WCB of AB has been traumatic, and this is why I told Debb that this assessment would produce an extremely negative effect on my mental state of mind, as it has forced me to recall all of the horrific things that the AB Govt has done to me in these 11+ years. I really do believe that I was targeted by the WCB of Alberta for abuse, by their special team of tactical Hacks and Quacks they keep on staff specifically to abuse injured workers they dislike. I believe this was a specific program that was designed to identify and target certain workers for abuse, and their specific objective was to deny Seriously Injured Workers medical care "From DAY 1". This program was initiated to ensure that there would never be any way for Seriously Injured Workers to defend themselves from these heinous medical attacks by Dr. Leslie DeLima WITHIN the Royal Alexandra Hospital.

 The Psyche doctor noted that I had trouble with my short term memory when recalled events, and the next day it struck me; "Precisely!" That is the precise reason that I created this blog, is because of the thousands of documents I have acquired over the years on my case file have so totally overcome my life; that it is simply not possible to ever go back and recall on demand the specifics of any single event during those 11 and 1/2 long years. Trying to remember details of my case after almost 12 years is so stressful that I am delighted that I had the foresight to create this blog in order that I would be able to go back and look at my blog to help me recall what happened.
 The trauma of being victimized by the WCB Claims managers and their do-nothing supervisors like Trevor Dill who by the way NEVER, EVER did respond to my telephone calls to his office. That is very telling of the underlying ROT at the WCB, this is a culture of "Government do-nothings".
 I believe that this culture of being a do-nothing lay about is not just a culture that is restricted to the WCB, but rather a larger ROT that permeates the Alberta Govt as a whole. Not all Govt agencies are as abusive as the WCB, but my casefile is not a one time fluke; because this is a culture that I have witnessed up close for many years now and it trancends many of the AB Govt departments. I believe that the AB PC Govt provided workshops, and retreats so that they could inject this do nothing culture directly into all aspects of the Alberta economy. I am talking on the mid to upper levels of management of the AB Govt, that there was this kind of destructive culture that was promoted and instilled as a method of blocking access for certain groups of AB citizens in this province.
 When the same doors continue to be slammed in your face, that is not a coincidence, that is the evidence of the underlying ROT of the PC racist culture that abused me in the first place because I was hurt at work by no fault of my own doing. It really bothers me that the WCB of AB continues to deny that they even know WHO Dr. Leslie DeLima even is, that signals to me that he is STILL trolling the halls of the Royal Alexandra Hospital looking for his next indigenous victim. That is shocking and should be shocking to the AB Govt, that this is considered to be Standard Operating Procedure within the framework of the Alberta Hospitals network, and that the Govt refuses to even acknowledge that these practises remain in place right now and right here in our province.
 The Royal Alexandra Hospital has never tried to deny these facts publicly, nor has the WCB of Alberta tried to deny their program of direct interference of Injured Workers care using their Hack doctors to attack trauma patients who are under the care of the Royal Alexandra hospital.
 That is what scares the hell out of me and wakes me in the middle of the night sweating and in tears.....and it should scare you if you ever are unfortunate enough to be born Caucasian challenged and under the care of the Alberta Health Services that administrates the hospitals in this province.

 For me those are the most traumatic experiences and what the Alberta Govt agencies did to me in the ensuing years afterward that still haunt me today.
 Chronic Pain and fatigue have come to visit again.......more later folks.

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