Good morning everyone!
Diane - I lived with bad knees since high school and had all sorts of shots and had them cleaned out several times until I finally had them both replaced in 2008. No more problems!:-)
Donna - Happy to hear Howard is getting his work issues resolved.
It rained all night and is supposed to be rainy till Friday. The weekend is supposed to be fine and I hope they are correct as the church is having their
Blessing of the Bikes which is a pretty big event there.
As far as our WC case. What a waste of time and a long drive. The only attorney we saw was our own. The mediation took place without us! I guess there was our lawyer, the employer's lawyer and the court-appointed lawyer's A (defense oriented), B (neutral) and C (plaintiff oriented). I guess their job was to decide the value of the case (which would been a lot easier if our attorney would have asked us to get a document stating Ike's current status which is that the numbness and tingling have stopped, but there still is pain but the main problem is he has virtually no grip strength. He made an appointment to see his doctor on the 29th and have this put in the record. We could have had this done but he never said that this was important. Ack.
Attorney A thought the settlementt should be one years pay, attorney C thought two year and attorney B thought they should meet at the middle at 1-1.2 years. Our attorney is still going to try for the two years (which, had he had the documents, attorney B would have agreed with the 2 years).
Here, the attorney cost for a WC case, settled before trial is 15% of the first $25,000 and 10% of every $10,000 thereafter. There will be an offset of his SSD, but it should not be too much. We ran into another snag, as well. In most cases, the VA does not put in a lien for reimbursement for tests and surgery but the nasty defense attorney brought this up when the deposition of the surgeon took place, so, we could win and still lose.:-( We will pray that this will not happen.
One good thing, is that attorneys A, B and C all agreed that the independent medical examiner hired by the defense was totally incompetent and all of his input was dismissed and that the medical information by the VA will stand.
So, in other words, we still know nothing! The next step is that our attorney will write to the defense attorney that Ike is having and update on his hands and the fact that he will never be able to use his hands for any full-time work at his former pay level again and once this has been dictated and printed, negotiations will seriously commence.
While out, I got a lot of the stuff we will need for our little trip next month.
Have a wonderful day!

To Everything, There is a Season...