My user name is rap59. I am a 52 years old. I am a wife, mother and grandmother. For the past 12 years I have been living with the debilitating and chronic pain of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome in both of my arms and hands. I am on long term disability with W.C.B. and am presently in yet another appeals process with them. On October 18th of 2010, they stopped paying for my medications. After three years and far too many painful procedures endured, my doctor and I finally found medications that at least helped me to somewhat endure the constant and devastating pain that is now my day to day reality. The medications were/are narcotics and were approved by W.C.B.. Without any warning or even consulting with my doctor, they quit paying for the medications even though they had approved them and had been paying for them for seven years at that time. They insisted that I begin their tapering off program but were unwilling or unable to make any suggestions as to what other medications would be suitable to aid in the managing of my pain after I was "tapered off" of the narcotics.
My personal doctor has been both a blessing and a God send! She has been supportive and willing to take on W.C.B. in regards to this latest arbitrary decision make by them for me. The difficulty is that they are once again using a "psych assessment" that had been done by a Dr. Darlington of Calgary, Alberta which basically stated that I was an individual predisposed to addictive behavior, a chronic liar and abuser of the system! When that assessment had first been added to my W.C.B. file, I had reached out to a W.C.B. chat room. At that time I found numerous individuals who had been given the same assessment by Dr. Darlington word for word, page by page! It is my hope that these individuals or anyone else, for that matter, would be willing to send me an e-mail or a letter to confirm that this Dr. Darlington in using form psych assessments over and over again in order to discredit W.C.B. recipiants. I know how huge this request is to ask of anyone let alone from someone that doesn't even know me but I am desperate to the "crazy making" tactics that W.C.B. is so proficient at putting us all through! I would not expect anyone to reveal their true names or any personal information beyond that of testifying to your own personal experience with Dr. Darlington as well as excerpts from your own assessment which will confirm my allegations of "cookie cutter" assessments being made by this "doctor"! My own personal assessment was 35 pages long and I would love to compare my assessment with whomever is willing to compare it with mine.
So, that's it! In the meantime, I wish you all peace and the courage to continue the endure, endure, endure!

All my best,
rap59

rap59,

Hello and welcome to NeuroTalk. Happy to see you have come to be with us. Just let us know if we can be of any help.

There are great number and caring fellow members here, you will see we are supportive and relaxing place. Our shoulders are here for support in many ways. Check into the following forum there will be someone there to assist you:

Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD and CRPS):
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum21.html

Again welcome, looking forward to seeing you around. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Darlene

Welcome to NT!

I'm sorry that you suffer from this condition. I understand what you are going thru painwise. You'll find many caring people over on the CRPS forum (Darlene gave the link). They probably will offer some good feedback re: WCB

It's great to have you with us!

Rae

Welcome to Neuro Talk. I can't address the trouble you are having with that particular organization, but I can understand the frustration you are going through. To be cut off from the medications you need, without giving you others to take their place is horrible to do to a person with RSD. The insurance companies seem to like to do that to people. I have issues with medicare/medicaid, and it hasn't been easy with those agencies either. I hope there will be some others able to post to you, about similar problems with this doctor and insurance program. The label they gave you for your psych evaluation sounds like an excuse to me, to remove the help from your life. I hope you fight this for all you are worth. I do not have RSD, but I certainly have great compassion for those that suffer from it. I have PN and cervical issues, and pain is not my friend either. I hope you get some resolution, to where you can keep the medications you need to give you quality of life. Do you have a lawyer? I would go that far, if it meant I could have less pain. I wish you all the best. ginnie