This whole thing seems so needlessly drawn out.

It’s been over a month since the doctor has released me to go back to regular duty (I was on “light duty” due to my finger being crushed and the joint destroyed). A position opened up and it was offered to me, but I had to get off light duty to do it. I was fine with that since it was a desk job with even less lifting than I was doing on “light duty,” so I asked the doctor to release me.

He checked me out and agreed and I was released.

So I took the paper into work, gave it to human resources. I told the manager who offered the job to me that I was ready to start, but he told me that someone else had to be offered the job because I wasn’t released. Of course, I told him that I was, but he said that there’s more to being released than the doctor – the insurance company paying the bills has to release me. That may take some time.

Now, it doesn’t make much sense why the insurance company would be dragging its feet. You’d think that the sooner I’d be released, the sooner they’d be able to stop paying for me.

A month went by and I was told that “it takes time” and “it’s up to the insurance company.” Getting a bit fed up, I called the insurance company and asked them what was the big freakin deal. They said that, yes, I was released and should be able to go back to full duty as of a month ago. I asked them why I wasn’t and they didn’t really have an answer.

I related this to human resources and they said that the insurance company still needs to fax some paperwork to them.

Someone is dropping the ball here and it’s not me. I don’t think it’s human resources, really, because they want me to be out of the light duty job so that another worker (who actually needs it) can take it. But they can’t move me out of it until I’m fully released.

So it appears that the party with the least amount to gain from me being on light duty is to blame. Odd that the party with the most to gain was fine with releasing me right away.

I’ve got two more doctors appointments. One is a final medical check up and the other is some assessment that they do for the Dept of Labor & Industry. They rate my permanent damage and award me some BS “settlement.”

There was some interesting insurance company stuff going on here (as there was prior to the surgery), but I’ll save them for a later date – after everything is completed.

As for the permanent damage stuff, my finger has more movement in it than the doctors thought it would have, but it’s far from being back to normal. They say that it might get better over the next year or so. It also healed at a strange angle. When I make a fist, this fifth finger angles off to the side. Fun, no? No. Not really.

But everyone seems very surprised that I healed as well as I did. Even the insurance company was saying how severe of an injury it was.

That’s it. More about all of this when I know more about all of this.