It’s so exhausting and insulting that I have to jump over all these hurdles that were forced upon me by a doofus who slammed into my car and two others.

My car and the Rav 4 that got shoved into my Pontiac, were totaled.

The impact broke my right shoulder-not horribly. I know I was damn lucky. Realizing that no airbags deployed in my car and that I was still breathing and mostly intact confirmed my good luck.

The orthopedic I was referred to by the ER doctor at AdventHealth ordered 18 physical therapy sessions over six weeks. Thus, began a journey of discovery of the redundancies and disorganization that the American healthcare system is based upon.

I’m so over it.

I had to track down my own home-based physical therapy agency. I needed to have the therapist come to my home because my car was turned into mangled scrap material. Hopefully, a lot of it will be recycled.

The process of finding such physical therapy turned into an almost weeklong ordeal. Then after finding an agency, and having the doctor’s orders faxed, I heard nothing for almost two weeks.

This accident happened when I was in the middle of being treated for five different medical issues. The fifth issue was a scary spot on my left shoulder that was biopsied and found to be squamous cell carcinoma. It was actually the least stressful issue I had going on, as I’d already had squamous and basal cell lesions removed in January and April of 2019. When the Rav 4 creamed my car I still had stitches in my shoulder. The removal of which was now a question mark because I obviously was no longer going to have my own personal transportation to the doctor. And, working in a grocery store barely pays my bills; I couldn’t afford to use Uber or Lyft every time I needed to go somewhere.

It was easy to let two weeks slide by when I was dealing with my womanly issues. Earlier in the year I had a polyp removed from my uterus, had a D&C and began cream therapy on pre-cancerous cells on my vulva. I endured a total of two trans-vaginal ultrasounds and on September 27th, I had the last, stubborn pre-cancerous cells on my vulva cut off.

I had a lot on my plate; I still have a lot on my plate.

By the time of the vulvaectony, I was receiving physical therapy. As I said above, two weeks elapsed before I realized I hadn’t heard from a physical therapist. So, I called and the response was, “Oh, you’ve been assigned a therapist. No one contacted you?” “Nope.”

It took a few days, but I finally got my physical therapy started. But this halted at session number 14. That was on or around October 10th. We were still working on the first order of sessions. By then I’d gone to my first follow up with the orthopedic’s nurse practitioner, who gave me orders for, at least, 12 more sessions over four more weeks.

On October 11th I began jumping through more hoops to restart physical therapy. That took talking to a representative from my insurance company, Florida Blue. Yes, even though this medical care is due to an auto accident, my auto insurance company is done paying, so my health insurance has to cover the rest.

I also had to call the human resource company, Unum, because they actually denied my leave of absence and I had to appeal that. I had to call Rothman Orthopaedics to have them re-fax physical therapy orders, not to Advantage Care, the local agency, but an entity called Care Centrix, which is a national company in charge of farming out orders to local agencies. One of the companies they work with is Florida Blue.

The redundancy is ridiculous. Capitalism-what a concept.

Yesterday, I had a new (was actually supposed to be my second one, but Advantage Care dropped the ball on the first one) evaluation. At least this time around I got a groovy new booklet.

The evaluator told me I’d be getting both a physical and an occupational therapist. Hmm.

Today I was evaluated by first the physical therapist and about half an hour later, the occupational therapist. Allison, the physical therapist gave me a distinction between the two I hadn’t heard before. According to her, physical therapists work with the lower limbs and occupational therapists work on the upper limbs.

This posed another problem. My doctor ordered physical therapy. Apparently, I need occupational therapy. If I get a different kind of therapy than orders, it could impact my lawsuit-yeah, it’s still pending. It’s been going on three months.

So, I had to contact my attorney. I’m still waiting on an answer.

My head was sent spinning over all the hurdles I have to jump over to heal from this stupid auto accident that wasn’t my fault. This is also impacting when I return to work, especially after learning from the occupational therapist that he thinks I’m going to need extra sessions. My range of motion goes up and down (yeah, that might be a pun), depending upon how much I’ve used or misused my shoulder and how many hours I’ve accidentally slept on it. I usually sleep on my right side. That got reinforced during the time my left knee replacement was healing; it was really uncomfortable to sleep on my left side.

So, I’m about to start on 16 more therapy sessions next week. This easily is going to bleed into the middle of November. I’m just so over this crap.