Workers Comp Help
Foot Injury At Work Causing Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome
I was injured on 6/30/01. I worked as a tank truck driver delivering water (among other substances) to and from gas wells in North Texas. I loaded my truck that day at a drilling rig in the pouring down rain.
The rain had been coming down all day and the ground had one foot of standing water on it. I headed back to my truck and stepped into a hole approx. 18 inches deep bending my toes up to my leg tearing the nerve in my right ankle. Blood ran down the nerve canal forming scar tissue thus putting alot of pressure on the nerve.
Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome was the diagnoses. Surgery was my only option of pain relief so I agreed. After my first surgery I had to ongo physical therapy. My foot was better than before surgery for about three weeks before it got much worse.
My doctor wanted to perform another surgery this time using schlastic sheeting on both sides of the nerve and I agreed. The sheeting was to provide a barrier between the nerve and the scar tissue that was expected to grow back. The sheeting would remain for eight weeks at which time it would be removed with a simple surgery. Instead of approving the surgery the insurance adjuster sent me to one of their doctors (in which they had to have paid off) who said that I should have returned to work a month after the first surgery. This is the same doctor that I took my MRI and XRAYs to and he didn't even pull them out of the sleeve to exam them before writing his report! Well that gave the insurance company enough to file a dispute with the Texas Workers Compensation Commission.
The TWCC sent me to a designated doctor who agreed with my doctor that the surgery needed to be performed again (oh sweet victory).
I had the second surgery and then the sheeting removed. This is where it goes downhill fast. The surgery worked but three weeks later my foot swelled up and I was in a great deal of pain. I went back to my doctor and he took some XRAYs thinking that I had a stress fracture. Well it turns out now I have Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD). My doctor sent me to a pain specialist and the outlook isn't very good. I am expected to have some nerve blocks and if that doesn't take care of the problem I will have to have a pain pump installed in my body. I have read up about RSD and found that nerve blocks seldom work.
The worst part about this situation is that I can no longer drive a truck for a living. I asked TWCC what I needed to do about getting an education so that I could make a living and they told me that the insurance company is not responsible for retraining me so that I can make a living. Instead the told me to cal the Texas Rehabilitation Commission for help in this area so I did. The TRC told me my wife makes too much money for them to help me. Never mind that my wife and I are in over our heads in debt and are in danger of losing our house and everything else we have worked our butts of for.
The only way I can receive lifetime benefits from the insurance company is if I can't go back to work doing what I was doing when the injury occurred and that I'm 15% impaired. Well guess what, the medical journals that the doctors go by to access an impairment rating only allow 10% impairment on a foot and that's only because there is nerve damage.
In the end I can't go back to work driving a truck ever and I can't get an education. There is something terribly wrong with this system.