Oh, I forgot this was here!
Dec/18/10 12:02 AM
Well....it’s been a while since I have said anything here, I kinda forgot about it to be honest. Lots has happened since May...
I went back to work in a Limited Duty capacity, trying to keep my Rural Carrier job, went so far as to have the Dr. write that I had no restrictions other than time, so I could try to keep doing my job the way it always was. I was unable to, stopping on the side of the road some days and just having to rest/cry/hurt, so I asked the Dr. would he lower the restrictions, which he did. I was eventually called into the office because of Post Office politics, I did not have a CA-17, which is the Post Office version of a sick note, that was current I did have sick notes, which the rest of the world takes! My Dr. at the time refused to fill one out, so he had me do what’s called a FCE, or Functional Capacity Exam, which is a general test that is supposed to dictate how well you are doing. The test was complete crap, I did nothing that I did at my job, mentioned this to my lawyer and Dr. and he said I should get another job. Back to the called to the office for politics bit, it eventually ended with me being told to go home until I got a CA-17. I originally thought this was the PO calling my ‘bluff’, which I though was funny, it’s not up to me to fill it out, it’s up to the Dr., who would not fill one out. I have since come to believe that I was sent home because the PO is crying they do not have any money, and that way the Dept. of Labor would pay me. I really have no idea if any of this is true, it’s all speculation on my part. I was also ordered to do another FCE, got the call the night before! My truck is pretty much broken beyond repair, I don’t trust it to drive to Raleigh, it only goes in town or to the trash dump, and the motorcycle is too painful to drive, so I had to get Terry to move some of her work schedule around, what a PITA. I am still here, still getting paid a portion of my salary from the Dept. of Labor, and still pretty bored.
As far as doctors go, I am seeing Dr. Lam at the REX pain clinic, he’s tried just about everything, from trigger point injections to therapy and most recently, Epidurals done under an X-Ray into my neck. So far nothing has been successful. The less I do the better off I am, but I can’t do jack shit forever, as good as that sounds when you’re working, it quickly becomes boring. Perhaps if I were completely healthy I would have a different outlook, but I am currently unable to do the things I enjoy outside, motorcycling and fishing, things I used to do damn near year-round. I have been referred to a surgeon earlier this week to see if there is anything that can be done by cutting, Dr. Lam states that there is clearly something going on in the neck area around C3-C4, as seen on a CT scan, so who knows. I have enough friends with back issues that I am a bit leery of operations, not only for the risk of paralyzation, but for the recurring problem possibility.
Other than that I’ve been catching up on my television shows, the Sons of Anarchy was very good this season, the fact that the club knew Jax was ealing with the ATF lady was surprising to me in the end. I also enjoyed The Walking Dead. I think some of the character scenes were a bit long, but maybe I’m jut used to zombie games where action is the main thing. Fringe has gotten a bit weird, so I am hesitant to continue watching that, but I will eventually. House and Cuddy being together has completely turned me off from the show, why bother?
As far as games, I’m still playing the shit out of Killing Floor, and have started playing some Team Fortress 2, I am not big on shooting other folks, but the sheer amount of choice in TF2 characters and the item system have me pretty much hooked. I have been waiting for a game called Dungeon Defenders to come out on Steam, but it got pushed into next year, so I was excited to see it show up on the iOS store. I purchased it immediately, and tried to take a sneak peek at it in-between TF2 matches....Bad idea, the game refuses to run now, starting up, the Game Center welcome banner comes up...then it takes me back to the homescreen. I am going to update to the 4th generation Touch soon, I really want the camera, so hopefully it will work better on there, the premise of the game, Action RPG/RTS has me excited. I suppose I could wrestle the iPad from Terry if I really wanted to play it though!
Not much else going on around here, the kids are all home for the Holidays, Terry only has a few days left to work, and she’s off until the 2nd week in January (I think) and everyone is pretty excited, hell, we’ve even seen snow twice already this year, it normally doesn’t snow until January, and only once. Very happy that we moved before the heating season this year, not only does everyone in the house get their own space/room, but there is Heat Pump heat in this house, we would have had to fill up the LP tank twice in the other house already, at a minimum, that’s a $1000-$1200 bill I am happy to avoid, it also leaves more more for Christmas presents and toys for me!
No picture this time, I’ve not taken any lately
I went back to work in a Limited Duty capacity, trying to keep my Rural Carrier job, went so far as to have the Dr. write that I had no restrictions other than time, so I could try to keep doing my job the way it always was. I was unable to, stopping on the side of the road some days and just having to rest/cry/hurt, so I asked the Dr. would he lower the restrictions, which he did. I was eventually called into the office because of Post Office politics, I did not have a CA-17, which is the Post Office version of a sick note, that was current I did have sick notes, which the rest of the world takes! My Dr. at the time refused to fill one out, so he had me do what’s called a FCE, or Functional Capacity Exam, which is a general test that is supposed to dictate how well you are doing. The test was complete crap, I did nothing that I did at my job, mentioned this to my lawyer and Dr. and he said I should get another job. Back to the called to the office for politics bit, it eventually ended with me being told to go home until I got a CA-17. I originally thought this was the PO calling my ‘bluff’, which I though was funny, it’s not up to me to fill it out, it’s up to the Dr., who would not fill one out. I have since come to believe that I was sent home because the PO is crying they do not have any money, and that way the Dept. of Labor would pay me. I really have no idea if any of this is true, it’s all speculation on my part. I was also ordered to do another FCE, got the call the night before! My truck is pretty much broken beyond repair, I don’t trust it to drive to Raleigh, it only goes in town or to the trash dump, and the motorcycle is too painful to drive, so I had to get Terry to move some of her work schedule around, what a PITA. I am still here, still getting paid a portion of my salary from the Dept. of Labor, and still pretty bored.
As far as doctors go, I am seeing Dr. Lam at the REX pain clinic, he’s tried just about everything, from trigger point injections to therapy and most recently, Epidurals done under an X-Ray into my neck. So far nothing has been successful. The less I do the better off I am, but I can’t do jack shit forever, as good as that sounds when you’re working, it quickly becomes boring. Perhaps if I were completely healthy I would have a different outlook, but I am currently unable to do the things I enjoy outside, motorcycling and fishing, things I used to do damn near year-round. I have been referred to a surgeon earlier this week to see if there is anything that can be done by cutting, Dr. Lam states that there is clearly something going on in the neck area around C3-C4, as seen on a CT scan, so who knows. I have enough friends with back issues that I am a bit leery of operations, not only for the risk of paralyzation, but for the recurring problem possibility.
Other than that I’ve been catching up on my television shows, the Sons of Anarchy was very good this season, the fact that the club knew Jax was ealing with the ATF lady was surprising to me in the end. I also enjoyed The Walking Dead. I think some of the character scenes were a bit long, but maybe I’m jut used to zombie games where action is the main thing. Fringe has gotten a bit weird, so I am hesitant to continue watching that, but I will eventually. House and Cuddy being together has completely turned me off from the show, why bother?
As far as games, I’m still playing the shit out of Killing Floor, and have started playing some Team Fortress 2, I am not big on shooting other folks, but the sheer amount of choice in TF2 characters and the item system have me pretty much hooked. I have been waiting for a game called Dungeon Defenders to come out on Steam, but it got pushed into next year, so I was excited to see it show up on the iOS store. I purchased it immediately, and tried to take a sneak peek at it in-between TF2 matches....Bad idea, the game refuses to run now, starting up, the Game Center welcome banner comes up...then it takes me back to the homescreen. I am going to update to the 4th generation Touch soon, I really want the camera, so hopefully it will work better on there, the premise of the game, Action RPG/RTS has me excited. I suppose I could wrestle the iPad from Terry if I really wanted to play it though!
Not much else going on around here, the kids are all home for the Holidays, Terry only has a few days left to work, and she’s off until the 2nd week in January (I think) and everyone is pretty excited, hell, we’ve even seen snow twice already this year, it normally doesn’t snow until January, and only once. Very happy that we moved before the heating season this year, not only does everyone in the house get their own space/room, but there is Heat Pump heat in this house, we would have had to fill up the LP tank twice in the other house already, at a minimum, that’s a $1000-$1200 bill I am happy to avoid, it also leaves more more for Christmas presents and toys for me!
No picture this time, I’ve not taken any lately
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First day back, sort of
Feb/27/10 05:52 PM
The title is a bit misleading. I have been back at work since last August, but not doing my normal job, which is to deliver mail. I had been doing distribution tasks such as ‘breaking out’ or sorting mail to the individual routes, and the P.O. Box section, or even helping sort packages. My hours for that started out, during the 4 hour a day/20lb. limitation time, were 6-10AM. After a few months, the Dr. bumped me up to 6 hours a day, and my hours changed to 5AM-11AM, both of which were a shock to me. I only got up that early to go fishing! I had my fair share of struggles during this time, but I was also helping out the team, and there were others there to help me with things I was unable to accomplish as well as pick up my slack while I was resting or stretching my injuries.
Fast forward to today, which is the fourth time I have been told I was to start my route, so naturally I didn’t really expect to carry mail until I got to work this morning at 10AM, and saw that it was, in fact, going to happen. I’ve been anxious as well as nervous to carry mail for some time now. Anxious because I hate doing distribution tasks, nervous because I still (sort of) remember being run over! My hours, at least for the next few days, are 10AM-4PM, quite a change. My sub, Whitney, has the task of casing the mail, my job is to tie the loose ends together and deliver it.
Getting to work today was a bit of a memory test, trying to remember the little things I did to deliver mail as quickly as possible, as well as to remember to bring all the things I need with me, keys, signature sheets, a scanner, a pen, sunglasses, etc, etc. I also elected to case, or put some of the letter mail, called DPS, in the well, case, which I normally don’t do, for the first few days until I get used to carrying mail again. This was both a good idea as well as a mistake. I had been casing DPS for a while now in the P.O. Box section, and had figured out that if I moved my whole body while placing the mail in the boxes, I looked a bit silly, but it hurt way less. This worked for my case as well, up until the point that I needed to pull all that mail down into a tray and take it to the street. This was the start of the problems I faced today, as I had to stop several times before I could get it all done. I finally got it all, even got it loaded into the truck. I figured the mail trays I like to use would be a problem as well, but the weight didn’t bother me, just the extension gives me problems.
Now It’s time to get out on the road, it’s around Noon thirty now, and I’ve not run this route in 4 years, or any route in a year, so I took a minute to collect my thoughts before I took off. I got to my first box and that’s when I figured out today was going to be very long. I undid the top part of my seatbelt, we have a combo lap/shoulder belt, reached out the window, popper the box open and winced. I did this about 700 times total today, although it got numb/better as the day went on. Actually delivering the mail is a solo effort, so I had to soldier on today, there were no other folks that could pick up my slack while I took a break or tried to stretch the tightness out. I ended up finishing around 4:30PM, and working until 4:45PM, a full 45 minutes later than I am supposed to, but I wanted to see exactly how I felt at the end of the day. Now that i’m done and writing this, I’m feeling a bit better, but I am going to be sore tomorrow. Thankfully I started on a Saturday where I get the following day off to rest, this should be interesting Tuesday! All told I’m glad to be back to delivering mail, hopefully I can get these problems sorted out and can continue doing this, I really enjoy my early afternoons, especially in the Summertime.
Fast forward to today, which is the fourth time I have been told I was to start my route, so naturally I didn’t really expect to carry mail until I got to work this morning at 10AM, and saw that it was, in fact, going to happen. I’ve been anxious as well as nervous to carry mail for some time now. Anxious because I hate doing distribution tasks, nervous because I still (sort of) remember being run over! My hours, at least for the next few days, are 10AM-4PM, quite a change. My sub, Whitney, has the task of casing the mail, my job is to tie the loose ends together and deliver it.
Getting to work today was a bit of a memory test, trying to remember the little things I did to deliver mail as quickly as possible, as well as to remember to bring all the things I need with me, keys, signature sheets, a scanner, a pen, sunglasses, etc, etc. I also elected to case, or put some of the letter mail, called DPS, in the well, case, which I normally don’t do, for the first few days until I get used to carrying mail again. This was both a good idea as well as a mistake. I had been casing DPS for a while now in the P.O. Box section, and had figured out that if I moved my whole body while placing the mail in the boxes, I looked a bit silly, but it hurt way less. This worked for my case as well, up until the point that I needed to pull all that mail down into a tray and take it to the street. This was the start of the problems I faced today, as I had to stop several times before I could get it all done. I finally got it all, even got it loaded into the truck. I figured the mail trays I like to use would be a problem as well, but the weight didn’t bother me, just the extension gives me problems.
Now It’s time to get out on the road, it’s around Noon thirty now, and I’ve not run this route in 4 years, or any route in a year, so I took a minute to collect my thoughts before I took off. I got to my first box and that’s when I figured out today was going to be very long. I undid the top part of my seatbelt, we have a combo lap/shoulder belt, reached out the window, popper the box open and winced. I did this about 700 times total today, although it got numb/better as the day went on. Actually delivering the mail is a solo effort, so I had to soldier on today, there were no other folks that could pick up my slack while I took a break or tried to stretch the tightness out. I ended up finishing around 4:30PM, and working until 4:45PM, a full 45 minutes later than I am supposed to, but I wanted to see exactly how I felt at the end of the day. Now that i’m done and writing this, I’m feeling a bit better, but I am going to be sore tomorrow. Thankfully I started on a Saturday where I get the following day off to rest, this should be interesting Tuesday! All told I’m glad to be back to delivering mail, hopefully I can get these problems sorted out and can continue doing this, I really enjoy my early afternoons, especially in the Summertime.