Please help Jennifer! What happened at American Express Moneygram
Jennifer's story from our perspective, the way we see it
Before: Jennifer in 1983
Hello, my name is Jennifer. I live in Colorado, near Denver. I'm a good person and I had always been a good hard worker too.
In 1991, I took a job with American Express, doing customer service work for their Moneygram division. By the summer of 1993, they had changed the name to First Data Corporation. I had been there about 18 months and was one of their best Customer Service Representatives. In fact I won their May of 1993 Employee of the Month Award. They said that my hard work saved them around $750,000 in just the quarter before I was injured.
But later that summer, just 2 days before I was scheduled to interview for a promotion and a pay raise, there was an accident. They had a lunch room with an ice machine, and they hadn't put down a rubber mat in front of it. One day some of the ice fell on the floor and I was walking by and slipped in it, taking a bad fall that tore apart my right knee inside. My doctor said the patellar tendon was stretched out like spaghetti, almost to the breaking point. I had to have major surgery, on September 1st of 1993. Being I was injured at work, it was paid for by Worker's Comp insurance.
It was terribly painful, the whole knee and joint area had to be repaired by my orthopedic surgeon. I expected that once the surgery was done, it would take me awhile to recover and then I could go back to work and get my promotion and pay raise. But instead of that happening, the pain stayed the same. I didn't know why, and because it was a Worker's Comp case, the insurance company was fighting any attempts to find out why and was trying to deny me any further medical care. They accused me of not wanting to go back to work and of "malingering"! But I had every reason to want to go back to work, I had just made "Employee Of The Month" that May and they were about to interview me for a raise and promotion when this accident happened! I wanted nothing more than to go back to work! And I loved my work. It was challenging and interesting.
The fight with the insurance company went on for many more months as we tried to find out why the pain wouldn't go away. It was a terrible pain that burned like my knee was on fire. One time they even sent me to a pain clinic to get treatment with biofeedback, and other physical therapy. One of the doctors was walking through with the director of the clinic and he asked if it was possible that my pain was being caused by RSD. The director snapped at him; "Shut up!". It was a worker's comp case and apparently they wanted to play ball with the insurance company that was paying them and didn't want to do any additional diagnosis or treatments on me. I had no idea what "RSD" was and forgot about the incident.
The pain continued relentlessly. Late in 1994, I went back to see my orthopedic surgeon, who had also been my doctor for an injury I'd had many years before that. My right leg was sort of a pink and purple blotchy color and the leg and foot were cold to the touch. He examined my leg and said to me; Jennifer, I known you and I know you're not "faking it" like the Workers Comp people are accusing you of. You've always been very stoic when it comes to pain, you're not a complainer, and I know if you could have gone back to work, you would have by now. He said he was beginning to wonder if I might not have RSD. Like I said, I had never even heard of RSD before and still didn't know what it was, but he said that he wanted to send me for a spinal nerve block test.
I had to go to an anesthesiologist to perform the spinal nerve block in a surgical room of the hospital. They saw that my leg and foot were blotchy purple and pink, and cold, and they put a thermal probe on my foot before performing the test. He did the nerve block. My pain went almost all away and my foot warmed up by 8 degrees! What a relief it was after all that pain for so long. I was so exhausted from the lack of sleep that I fell asleep on the operating table. I hadn't been able to sleep right in months! Because of this, the anesthesiologist diagnosed that what was wrong was RSD, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, a pain syndrome that had first been identified in soldiers after the Civil War. He later told me that it was RSD but he was a little nervous because the insurance company had been complaining that he was "diagnosing too much RSD". How could they say something like that, if it was the truth? What kind of ethics is it, to tell a doctor that he's "diagnosing too much" of something? He was only doing his job by diagnosing it.
They woke me up in awhile and sent me home and within 5 hours the pain came roaring back like a monster, even worse than before, and I cried and cried, it hurt so bad. So they tried a couple more of these nerve blocks, but they didn't work the second time and didn't work as well the third time, so they gave up on me and put me permanently on heavy pain drugs that have had to be increased a little each year. I was told that with RSD, the best chance of a cure was to catch it early enough, hopefully in the first few months, but because it was a Workers Comp case and the insurance company had been fighting me the whole way with every request for treatment, it had been a whole year until it was diagnosed and by then it was too late to have much of a chance of curing it.
It turned out that I was totally disabled with this nerve pain syndrome. The pain has been very slowly getting worse and worse and very slowly spreading, first to the toes of my right foot and now even to my left leg too. I was permanently disabled and wasn't able to go back to my job after that. Then I found out that the state of Colorado had passed a law that protected companies from being sued for negligence and pain and suffering in these kinds of Worker's Comp cases. They only had to pay for my initial medical costs and the small settlement that I finally recieved, was all that was allowed by these corrupt laws. It was only enough to cover my medical expenses for a few years after that and then left me high and dry with no income and no money for medical expenses. If I had been "faking it", I sure picked the wrong state to be injured in, as they had no legal liability to pay for their negligence that severely injured me and left me in ever-increasing pain and poverty for the rest of my life.
Since then, the pain has been gradually getting worse and worse. When this started, I used to describe it on a scale of 1-10, as being between a 3-4 most of the time. Then over a couple of years, it gradually increased to between 4-5, and so on. This past couple of years, it's been between an 8-10 most of the time.
Jennifer in 2002
Here I am now, at 44 years old, and I don't have much left to look forward to. I've been told that there's a specialist in this disease who may be able to help me, but he's in another part of the country, almost 2000 miles away, and I don't even have enough money to pay for my basic living expenses and my present medications.
Since 1994 I've had to live on a poverty income of a little over $700 a month from SSD ( Social Security Disability ) for working all those years before that, but it's not even enough to pay for a roof over my head, yet alone cover my living expenses and increasingly expensive medicines that I need just to survive. Most of my friends and family have drifted away over the years and I'm alone most of the time now. I know that I should keep fighting this and never give up, that life is precious, but my situation is very discouraging.
The best friend that I still have left, was suggesting to me that I should ask for help. I've never been one to do that before but she urged me to try anyway. She said that human kindness can be amazing and that if I could only get myself to ask for help, perhaps the good people of this world would reach out to me and help me now.
So I'm asking. Please. I need your help to survive, to help me make ends meet. If you can spare me a dollar or two, whatever you can, it would really help me. If many people sent me a few dollars, it could wind up making all the difference in the world to me, and would help me cover my living expenses and medicines that I need, just to keep going now. I might even be able to go see that doctor, and who knows, he might be able to help me get some relief.
So if you could find it in your heart to help me, please send just a dollar or two, or whatever you can afford, would you please?
Please help me!
Thank you!
And if you have a lot of money and would like to help me the most, for the longest time, please send me a large donation.
One of my last remaining friends helped me by doing this web page with my appeal on it.
posted by Melissa Liberty at 2:00 PM
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