The loss of my full-time income, which included the perk of having all my university fees and textbooks paid for and being paid to study as well as opportunity for career advancement, generous annual pay rises, generous staff gifts and awesome, ethically minded people to work with, was hard to take. I qualified for the state-run Accident Compensation scheme, ACC. (I did not have a private scheme as I had not been able to afford to pay both ACC’s levies and private premiums – New Zealand does not provide tax rebates for those who opt out of state funded services, it also does not permit individuals to sue due to its no-fault structure.) Living on ACC meant living on 80% of my salary, it did not include compensation for any of the addition perks that were part of my total remuneration packaged and it remained static each year irregardless of the pay rises I would have had and the increase to the CPI.

Before the accident I worked full-time and Matt did part-time, fixed-term, adjuncting here and there and was the primary care-giver for our children. That worked fine for us as for my skill-set there are always a pile of vacancies in every newspaper or employment site that I can apply for but for Matt’s much more specialist skills it is unheard of for there to be more than 2-3 in the country at any given time and frequently there are none (like, right now the only vacancy suitable for his skills in the tertiary sector has just closed – with his application submitted of course).

The job market in Matt’s field is extremely tough, if someone well established in the field applies a fairly recent graduate like Matt does not stand a chance. In addition to there being very few vacancies in New Zealand, overseas applications are fraught with difficulty given the immigration hurdles that each country must overcome – why are you hiring a New Zealander, are there no qualified local applicants who can do this job? Unless you’ve already made it and have heaps of experience, landing an overseas position is very, very tough, you’ll end up somewhere like Bulgaria – not that we would quibble with Bulgaria but they don’t seem to have current vacancies right now either.

On realising that I looked set to be out of the workforce for at least some years, if not permanently (the theory is that I will be at optimal recovery around 2-4 years post surgery, right now I am at 18 months post-op, but there is no promise whatsoever as to what my optimal level of recovery will be) last year Matt enrolled to do a one year Post-Graduate Diploma in Secondary Teaching so as to open up his employment options from just the tertiary sector to also the secondary sector. This has resulted in a fairly steady dribble of relief teaching but still not the elusive full-time position that he has been seeking since graduating PhD from the University of Otago in 2006.

Still it was enough to get by on with the ACC payments provided we slummed it in a very budget rental – our home for the past two years features 70′s decor (lots of yellow, brown and green swirly and floral patterns accented by fake crystal chandeliers), holes in the wall, ripped carpets, things like door and window handles and taps routinely breaking, things leaking in heavy rain, an electrical system that blows light-bulbs and makes them hum and flicker, replete with full-frontal view from the lounge of the very bright yellow Pak’n'Save supermarket across the very busy main road a few steps from our front door. But hey it is dry (when it is not leaking – by dry I mean, not damp), it holds its heat well and it is big and fairly cheap. The rubbish that blows onto our section from the Pak’n'Save carpark and the mountain of inorganic trash out the back from previous occupants that houses mice and rats we simply pretend to not see – the cats ensure that the rodents never make it into the house. For now this is home.

The problem now, and the reason for this blog post, is that ACC are broke and ACC, if the ACC Forums are anything to go by, are doing everything they can to get the expensive long-term people, like me, off their books. A couple of months ago I got a letter demanding I go and see a retired-from-surgery orthopedic surgeon way out in South Auckland, a good 45 minute drive in good traffic. The appointment was right in the middle of one my two university lectures of the week for my recently completed Bachelor of Law. I phoned my case manager and asked if I could change it and why this guy anyway – could I see someone else if he has no appointments available? Well, ACC got very aggressive. ‘You must see this guy on this date or else.’ They even wrote me a letter saying this and threatened me with cutting my payments until I had seen him – click on this image and see it for yourself:

This made me very suspicious, why were they so desperate for me to see him? I Googled the specialist’s name and boy oh boy did I find people whinging about him – see for yourself, type Brian Otto into the search engine of the ACC forums. I then began phoning orthopedic surgeons offices. I called 8, 7 out of the 8 when I had only gotten as far as saying “ACC want me to see a Brian Otto, I was wondering if…” when they would invariably interrupt  and exclaim something to the effect “he’s a charlatan”, “he’s a quack”, “he’s biased”, “he does not have the patient’s best interest at heart”, “he’s in ACC’s pocket, he writes whatever ACC want him to write”, “every single one of my accident patients has been deemed to not be an accident patient by him; every single one”, “if ACC are sending you to him, hire a lawyer” (the 8th office had not heard of him but the surgeon working there had also retired). When I searched my own surgeon’s name on the ACC forums I found a single post on the forum, very benign, some guy saying that when he hurt his back he went to see my surgeon who sorted him out and when I ran my surgeon’s name past the people I was speaking to I heard nothing but praise for his skill and expertise from his fellows in the profession.

I then researched who the best ACC lawyers in the country are and phoned their offices. They, despite being Wellington based, reacted with a palpable “oh” when I began my spiel “ACC want me to see a Brian Otto, I was wondering if…” They told me I was going to have to do what ACC wanted but to then immediately come back to them because in their experience Brian Otto was almost guaranteed to state that my pain issues were not accident related which would mean that ACC could “exit” me from their books.

I went to the appointment with Matt, I wanted a witness. Mr Otto seemed nice enough as he greeted us and led us into his examination room but I had barely sat down before he led with “we’re here today to discuss your degenerative condition.” I shot a look at Matt and then said and calmly and evenly as I could “what do you mean by degenerative?” He looked at me like I was being smart, paused a minute and said “precisely that.” I said, “I’m sorry, I’m confused, I was in a car accident, I am slowly improving, I do not have a degenerative condition.” He just looked at me  in a pointed manner and then changed the subject to asking medical stuff and from there it seemed like a normal specialist check-up.

But sure enough a few weeks later there came the phone call from my case manager telling me I was being cut-off in two weeks time. Matt drove into ACC and picked up the report from Mr Otto and there it was in black and white, he had decided that my pain problems are not to do with an accident, they are the result of a pre-existing degenerative condition probably brought on by having stress factors like challenging kids and the fact I spent 5 years of my life morbidly obese.

This is ridiculous. Disc problems caused by obesity are always lower back, not neck related and caused by long-term obesity and inactivity; I was not obese long-term and even when I was obese I was no couch potato – I walked, tramped, horse-rode. Further if the cause are my challenging kids then why is Matt’s neck not sore – he was the one at home with them, I was the one working full-time? As for a degenerative pre-existing condition, I am in my 30′s with no history of on-going neck problems. My medical history shows I was on no medication at all prior to the accident, I was not in receipt of any physio or other treatment, I was fine, I had no pain issues at all. My own experience of my neck function does not match Mr Otto’s assessment.

For me the test of pre-car accident neck function and post-car accident neck function is best summed up with these two pictures. The first was taken the weekend before the car accident and depicts me riding a feisty half-arab (those in the equestrian know, look at how badly he is behaving over this jump – I had to push him over everything and he kept trying to run off the course, it took a lot of strength to ride him that day) over a cross-country course, in a one-day event, which, despite the horse’s behaviour, I came first-place overall in my class for:

Before the car accident.

The preceding image depicts the very last time I would sit on a horse for two years.

In December, just passed, I was cleared to do Riding for the Disabled (RDA). The below image depicts me sitting on a very quiet, well-mannered RDA horse, riding in an enclosed arena, at a walk, with a catcher holding a lead-rein (just in case) walking next to me.

As they say, a picture paints a thousand words. I remember vividly that despite the grin plastered across my face in every one of the pictures taken that day at RDA – it was awesome to be back on a horse – it cost me in terms of pain to simply walk around the arena on that very quiet, well mannered, horse. It hurt to be in the saddle, not-excruciatingly, but it hurt and there was no way, no how I could have coped with galloping over jumps on a horse trying fight me every step of the way like I could the weekend before the car accident. The dramatic change in my capability to do my sport was sudden. It was not gradual and I can pin-point the date it happened.

I know my neck was fine before that woman drove her BMW into my tiny little Holden Barina causing my car to be written off, an ambulance to take me from my wrecked car to hospital, two years and counting of daily pill-popping of awful drugs like codeine and tramadol (basically morphine in capsule form) to commence (I never took a thing before that day – I avoided paracetamol!) and every single medical expert who examined me from that day forward including GP’s, physios, osteopaths, acupuncturists, pain specialists, world-class orthopaedic surgeons agreed that my problems began with that car accident. Also, the hunk of metal in the middle of my neck  (the black patch in this MRI scan that is kinda poking into my spinal cord) was not there before the accident either…

But the word of one retired South Auckland based specialist, whom it seemed clear to me had made up his mind prior to examining either me or my MRI scans and x-rays (he confirmed to both Matt and I that he had not viewed them prior to seeing me during the appointment), with a reputation strongly suggesting he is paid to form this conclusion, stated otherwise and this was apparently enough for ACC.

I phoned the law firm back and promptly hired them.

They say I have a good case. It is going to cost money up front and I will only get a small fraction back if I win, nothing if I don’t. It is a gamble worth paying though as it is insurance that I am entitled to, that I have spent years paying the premiums for and I have been wrongly dis-entitled of it. In the mean time, while we wait for the hearing on 30 September [the hearing was delayed, my new date is 21 April 2011] we have no stable or sufficient income. We are currently living in the scary and humbling place of hand to mouth base-level welfare (we do not qualify for the perks – if you can call them that), donations of food and money from our church, family and friends and the sporadic relief teaching work that Matt can land as we desperately apply for anything we think Matt is qualified to do full-time – Matt has tried the supermarkets, the fast-food chains, even the gold buying stand at the mall.

Obviously I cannot say too much more about our case but I will definitely update as to the outcome. In the mean time to every ACC recipient out there, if you get told to go and see Brian Otto, hire a good ACC lawyer. If you can qualify for legal aid (I don’t) you won’t have to pay anything up front.

Want to Help? You might consider making a donation to my ACC war fund. Every little bit adds up and is greatly appreciated.

On Friday I graduated from The Auckland Regional Pain Service (TARPS) 3 week program for chronic pain sufferers. On that course in addition to gaining new pacing skills, motivation and beginning a new strength and activation rehab program it was suggested to me a way of putting my love of horse riding back into my life – it was so simple I don’t know why I didn’t think of it – Riding for the Disabled. (Our daughter’s horse, Trogdor the Burninator, is half Arab and unreliably behaved at best so he’s not a safe option for me to ride)

So, having not been on a horse since riding in the Massey ODE back in March 2008, this morning I got back in the saddle thanks to Riding for the Disabled’s Henderson branch – something I long feared I would never be able to do again – but today I did it, and I’ve got the pictures to prove it!

The horse was called Dream… rather apt!

He has recommended more surgery.

He wants to remove the disc replacement that was done Dec 08 and replace it with a spinal fusion.

I am pretty devastated.

I need to pull myself together and make my deadline then think about it some more I guess.

Whilst we are trying to have blinkers on in terms of anything but study and essential day to day life, there have been some issues that have come up that we really want to blog on but lack the time. One in particular really has me going – the proposed changes to ACC.

There is not point in repeating what most bloggers of my political persuasion have already opined, I’ll just throw down a few thoughts from my own perspective as an ACC client.

My first point is that ACC is not welfare. It is an Accident Compensation Scheme. Accident compensation is about restoring a victim of an accident that was not their fault to as close as possible the state they were in pre-accident. Tort law is the area of law that, in the absence of state interference, covers injury caused by people’s negligence – what we call “accidents” here in New Zealand. Tort law says that you must take your victim as you find them; restoration, assessment of harm, is not to be based on the average person but on that person, the victim.

My next point that I’d like you to keep in mind as you read this is that I think that ACC should be private and fault based. This is my ideal. My ideal is not reality as in New Zealand, accident compensation is state run. While it remains state funded, while the option to sue my injurer remains unavailable to me by statute, it must function as a just and fair accident compensation scheme, run in line with tort jurisprudence.

I have some criticisms of the proposed changes based on that fundamental premise ACC is built on, that it is supposed to be an accident compensation scheme. I reiterate, I support moves in the direction of privatisation e.g. rebates for those who take out private accident insurance. I agree that it should not be available to those who get hurt participating in crime. I think it should not be available to those who self-harm when they have refused treatment and are culpable for the self-harm (I think self-harm is not as cut and dried as people think). I also think, given how bankrupt ACC is, that it is only realistic that the money come from somewhere, increased levies are inevitable as is some threshold or excess level. However, that is about as far as I’ll go with the government on this one. Getting it right as to what should be cut and what must be left is crucial and ACC and the new proposals FAIL miserably on this score.

People say that ACC is “excellent cover” and a “great scheme” but I disagree. I have lived on it for the past year and half since a car accident required the big black thing, in the middle of the below MRI scan of my neck, to be inserted into my neck. See how it is making a bulge into my spinal cord (the long dark gray thing in the middle)?

Anyway, having set out my premises, disclosed my bias and established that I am, in fact, injured, now judge for yourself if you think my cover is excellent or great or even adequate.

Pre-accident I was the main bread-winner for our family which comprises 4 children and two adults. I worked for a generous company that gave regular pay rises, gifts and outings to its staff and sometimes their families. I had access to discounted (sometimes free) cereal products and sandwich spreads which helped a lot with the family grocery bill. The company paid for my university fees, my text books and for me to attend lectures so I could complete my law degree. I had a career path set out in front of me, there was a ladder to climb. Matt worked part-time/fixed-term jobs within academia as he has struggled to find full time work as an academic within New Zealand. That worked for us as someone had to be home with the kids, though we would have preferred it the other way around, Matt full-time as an academic and me part-time but you know, life’s like that sometimes and as a family you make the best of it.

In March 08, whilst I was lawfully stopped at traffic lights, having left work heading for Uni, a woman drove into the back of my car, smashed me into the car in front, writing off my car and destroying two of the discs in my neck which led to disc replacement surgery in Dec 08. She was never charged, I was never given an explanation as to what happened, oh and, she never even had the decency to come over to my car and see if I was alright – other people, passers by and the occupants of the car in front, called the ambulance and stayed with me. As far as I know she got to go back to her life with only her own car insurance claim to worry about and she doesn’t have a clue about what happened to me (my injuries were initially mis-diagnosed as mild whiplash).

My employer got put through hell. All sorts of ACC nightmares ( I was officially on the clock) that took managers out of their normal jobs. My managers had to put up with temp after temp who couldn’t quite do my job because they didn’t have my institutional knowledge of the company. Nevertheless work sent me flowers, phoned me and held my job far longer than they legally had to. Eventually, when it became apparent I was not going to be fit for work for a very long time, if ever, they let me go but threw me a big party and gave me a leaving present.

ACC’s treatment of me was a different story.

We live on 80% of the full-time salary I was earning two years ago. No pay rises, no perks, no discounted household products or entertainment. No uni fees, no text books… So in reality it is not 80% of the income I was on as part of that income was not not salary, it is less than 80%.

How would you and your household  cope with a 20%+ drop in your income?

Then there are the extra costs that ACC do not cover:

Because I cannot just go to the chemist and get my pain medications without a prescription, I have to pay $20 a pop to my GP every 6 weeks to get the piece of paper that says I can get my pain meds. I tell the GP what drugs I want, how many and the GP rubber stamps it.

Every 12 weeks my specialist wants an x-ray. These cost me $35 a pop.

We have to purchase a tube of deep heat every week – it’s $8-10 depending on supermarket specials.

Then there is the petrol spent driving to the GP, pharmacy and specialist (his office is a decent drive). There is also the removal of Matt from whatever work or study he is doing to attend these appointments as I often cannot drive to them. Then there is the babysitting to get rid of the kids so I can attend these.

Add in the random stuff, MRI scans, visits to pain clinics and you get a more of these costs.

The expensive supportive bed we had to purchase so I could sleep cost a couple of grand.

Then there is the $200 pillow – it is a neck injury that I have afterall.

We recently purchased a monster bean bag so I have something supportive I can sit in, it is excellent for recovering after I have overdone it and it will be vital for exams and for having something portable when I want/need to go out – I can now spend a weekend-day at the beach with my kids for example. It cost $150.

Then there is Osteo treatment. Osteo treatment reduces the level of pain drugs I need to take by almost half. It is a very effective form of treatment. I am in less pain, I have improved function as a result of less pain, I can get more out of my life and I take less drugs. Osteo is GOOD. This costs me $35 per week. (Physio is free but physio is not effective for this injury – I have seen half a dozen different physios and none can produce the results anything like what osteo treatment can). As a family we made the sacrifices necessary to find that $35 a week. Until last week when my Osteo informed me that ACC had declined to fund their part of the treatment. I now owe my Osteo $75 for the 3 treatments that  I had after ACC decided they were not going to keep funding treatment but didn’t bother to tell me or the Osteo. If I want to continue Osteo I have to find $60 a week now.

But see above, I don’t have $60 spare a week. ACC does not even come close to restoring me to what I had before I was the victim of an accident.

So it is back to being a curled up ball of pain with no life or being completely fuzzed out on drugs.

Did I mention that continually taking the drugs (before I discovered osteo) irritated my stomach and caused so much pain to my stomach that I was admitted to hospital last year?

Apparently this decision makes sense to someone in ACC.

How does one quantify the mental costs? The stress, the cost to my family, my children not having me able to  actively participate in the physical aspects of their lives, knowing I will probably never be able to do the sport I love again?

But that’s not all. Then there are the battles with ACC.

They are trying to get me off their books. Now I get that. People bludge, make claims they are not entitled to and ACC needs to work out who should be on their books and who should not. However, when you have someone on your books who is in the constant, intense pain I am in, who has their life as altered as mine is, who has doctors and specialists and osteos and physios and everyone who has examined them singing the same tune, that should tell you something. That should tell you that paying a consultant to come around to that person’s house and spend two hours plus with them and then go away and write up a report stating what potential jobs that person could do if they went back to work is a tad premature. Especially when that person is but 2 papers away from having a law degree as obtaining the law degree dramatically changes the types of jobs that person will be able to do. But no, after ACC did this they then sent me to their own specialist, just yesterday, to get him to agree that I could do said recommended jobs.

They told me that if he said I could work 35 hours (30 hours under the new changes) then I would lose the 80% of my wage that ACC pay me and if in fact I couldn’t work that I would get sickness benefit instead (considerably less than 80% of my wage). Thankfully, the specialist on meeting with me agreed that it was extremely premature for me to be seeing him to discuss work options given the pain levels and almost seemed embarrassed at having been put in this position by ACC when it was so obvious – I have an outstanding MRI result that I have the scans for but not the result, that may or may not rule out more surgery and the pain clinic has just accepted me for their program but I am yet to do it – that I am a long way away from being able to work.

The taxpayer footed the bill for all of the above and it was not only unnecessary but extremely worrying for us. An example of ACC working to a time-formula rather than on the file facts.

Even more worrying is that under the proposed new changes ACC will not have to factor in my former salary level.  In the meeting with the consultant who looked at my job skill set, the fact I knew how to make coffee and run a restaurant meant that things like waitressing, barista work, etc came up. I knew how to do these things from the crap jobs that one picks up when one is a student or is going through rough patch but I hated those jobs. I absolutely never want to have to do though sorts of jobs again. I worked hard and gained skill sets and then gained a job that I loved that was using those new skills precisely so that I did not have to do, what I viewed as, crap jobs. Further it is not my fault that I lost that job. Thankfully a policy existed that meant that ACC could only push me towards jobs that paid within the ball-park of my previous job and used my skill-set so the risk of having to take a crap job in the event I recovered was minimised.

However that policy is about to be axed.

Amongst National’s proposed changes to ACC is the removal of that policy, if passed it will mean that if ACC find you a crap job using the skills obtained from you old after school job you have to take it, even if your pre-accident job was something much better paid and more prestigious and fulfilling. That is just not ok. It is not adequate compensation at all. If I was on unemployment benefit I would take any job I could get – in fact being unemployed is precisely how I came to get cafe and restaurant experience in the first place, I did take any job I could get. But this is different. I am not on welfare, I am on ACC.

Then there is the home help thing. We have 4 kids. Two of our kids, our boys, have disabilities (Aspergers Syndrome and as-yet-undiagnosed-but-diabolically-behaved). Matt has this  year gone off to teachers training college so he can get a post-grad diploma in teaching (more state bollocks but that’s another post) so he can improve his chances of obtaining full-time work and get our family back above the bread-line – so he is not  home much. Mon-Fri I am at home with our 8 and 9 year olds who are homeschooled largely because of the undiagnosed condition of the youngest. I cannot do dishes, washing (we do 1-2 loads per day), vaccuming, mopping, picking up, etc. Matt and Sherry (17 year old at Uni) get home frequently, after dinner, and then have assignments and study to do as well as helping as much as they can with housework.

ACC were giving me 6 hours a week home help to stay on top of those day-time things which meant that if Matt and Sherry got stuck into the rest around their studies we could keep on top of our housework. ACC mysteriously slashed my home help, to 2 hours a week. When I protested it I got given a review. The reviewer was really harsh. She kept saying that ACC will only pay for washing to be done once a week, vacuuming once a week, etc – though no policy proving that was shown to me and when I asked “well how did I used to get 6 hours a week, has been a policy change?” this was dodged. She kept saying other people cope, you have a husband and two teenagers they should be helping. When I pointed out that they are, that they are permanently exhausted from all they do and I feel like a bad mother for the amount Sherry helps with yet my house is still a mess as they are leaving the house at 6.30am and coming home after 6pm with assignments and doing what they can but it is not enough, also that  our 14 year old has Aspergers Syndrome and just panics and goes loopy if he is asked to do much more than a batch of dishes, he has a mental condition, it is not reasonable to expect too much from him.  In response to this, the assessor ACC sent around told me, get this, that my 8 and 9 year olds should be doing all the washing, vacuuming, dishes, etc! Unbelievable! I would, justifiably, have CYF on my doorstep if took that advice. I’m all for encouraging the kids to help out – it is part of being a family, it is how one learns to do these things for adult life but pulling the slack left by an adult incapable of running the house is going beyond too far for most, let alone 8 and 9 year olds!

Once I am free of exam and research I am going to do a massive appeal over this, a heap of energy expended fighting for something I shouldn’t have to fight for, but in the mean-time don’t visit because my house is a tip – I am horribly embarrassed by it but short of hurting myself or treating my young children like slaves or having Matt and Sherry give up sleep – they are both exhausted – there is not much I can do about it. It is again ridiculous and another example of lousy cover. There were no medical indicators to support their decision to slash my home help, my specialist, the specialist ACC  sent me to yesterday and my GP agree that I need a good 4-6  hours a week home help but ACC will not listen to them.

If you think I am starting to sound like a bludger who wants to get picky whilst resting on the taxpayer I remind you that ACC is not welfare, it is compensation, it is supposed to restore me to my pre-accident life because, due to no fault of my own, I was a victim of someone else’s negligence.  This policy will fall well short of that goal. If I am made to go waitressing our family will have to take a $30,000+ drop in pay and I’ll be stuck with a mind-numbing, dead-end job. Why? because I lawfully stopped at a traffic light and the state has set up the law so that the person who injured me was allowed to just walk away, I cannot sue and we are all penalised so hard via taxation that only the wealthy can afford to pay twice and get private accident insurance? How is that just?

I am not saying that I don’t think I should have to go back to work, when/if I am recovered and able to unless I have a job every bit as excellent as the job I had before the accident (that is probably unrealistic as I had it very good) but it is reasonable to want something close surely? To want something at least in the ball-park pay wise and with a future attached it it? Is that asking too much given that several years of pain-hell will have passed before I ever/if I ever get to that point?

If ACC cannot provide good support and restore people to something at least resembling the victim of an accident’s pre-injury life then it needs to be axed and handed over to the private sector. It cannot, see above, so axe it now.

To those of you insisting it remain state owned and protesting raises in levies ask yourself, how would you cope if you  were injured and were in my situation? Your career cut-off, your income slashed, the treatment options that were working now just out of reach and your future bleak? Is it worth the socialist-joy of knowing that “we own it”?

A better question, if you had to pay for accident compensation and you had the money to do so would you choose a company who gave the cover as outlined above or would shop around?

The resulting injuries I was left with have seen me have two discs replaced with artificial ones in my neck, my participation in competitive sport is over and I live with chronic pain and severe limitations to normal life.

I had hoped that surgery and the physio rehab program would see me recover sufficiently to resume work full-time but I did not recover at the expected rate so I lost my job. The explanation had been until now that the failure to recover was probably due to the length of time and amount of pressure key nerves were put under as I waited for a diagnosis and surgery, nerves do not have much of a blood supply so they take a long time to bounce back; however, my surgeon has just informed me that my latest x-ray shows that one of the new discs is not sitting quite where it should be.

At this point he wants to review me with another x-ray in 6 weeks. What precisely he is hoping will change in 6 weeks, I am not sure, but it sounds like more surgery could be on the cards.

The amount of compensation ACC will make available for me to make up for the fact I cannot, under New Zealand law, sue the woman who did this to me looks set to be less than $4,000 NZD – I am sure the leftys who want to keep accident compensation in the hands of the state think this will make me “wealthy” and I should be more than happy.

I have lost my job; termination due to medical incapacity.

This happened last week, the same day I got my news about my recovery setback, but due to the details needing to be sorted I couldn’t say anything til it was official.

Yesterday was my goodbye morning tea, Matt and I cleared out my office and I have my final pay … so I guess it is official now. I am unemployed.

Given I had the coolest job ever, I have been grieving quite a bit but it is the best decision. Work had held my place since the car accident back in March 08 and had had temp after temp – none of whom could do my legal role, they had to learn the ropes then they would leave then a new temp would come in… none of them were full time (temp rates) so I am amazed that work held the position for me as long as they did; it is the kind of company they are, though, really supportive and caring about their employees. (Legally an employer does not have to hold your job for you if you are off due to an accident at all under New Zealand law.)

I knew the stress my incapacity was putting my managers and the business under and I felt guilty for letting them down, even though I knew it was not my fault, so I don’t blame them at all. They have been really supportive and nice and kind and like my 8 year old daughter said to me, “don’t be sad Mum, if you had done something bad and been fired they wouldn’t be giving you a goodbye party.”

The morning tea was really nice. The whole office, not just my team were there, even some of the managers I knew from the factory. They put on an amazing spread and made speeches, gave me a card and a gift and even let me out of my bonding agreement with no penalty. They were so nice it was hard not to cry. I came home really sore, far too much standing and sitting, but I wanted to make my peace with saying good-bye so it was worth it.

So dawns a new chapter in my life.

The scary part now for us now is that my job was our main source of income. I was the bread winner.

Matt has spent nearly 3 years trying to find permanent, full-time employment as a lecturer to no avail. There just are not that many vacancies out there; such is the nature of the field. He is either under qualified, in that, he has not had several years of full-time lecturing under his belt or they assume that his PhD and his PhD level capabilities mean he cannot speak to or teach lay people or first-years – frustrating because his substantial 11 years experience teaching part-time has mostly been to first-years and lay people.

Ironically, he has had approaches from the secondary school sector to train as a high school teacher and teach teenagers philosophy and religious studies. This came off the back of a high school head of department inviting him to and actually seeing him teach a classroom of teenagers.

It’s nuts really. This blog is a working example of Matt’s range. Sure he can go way over the average lay person’s head (Philosphy is a complex discipline and he does hold a PhD in it) but then so too can he dial it down (because he has met a few people without PhD’s in philosophy and it has occurred to him that they don’t speak his language). His references, from highly respected members of his field, specifically highlight his ability to explain complex philosophical concepts to lay people in simple language and that his patience and teaching style with those not philosophically trained is excellent. They go out of their way to state that he is exceptional in this area. One is a current ethics adviser to the New Zealand government and the other is the former head of the Evangelical Theological Society. Both have actually seen him teach.

As you can probably tell this really peeves me. Matt is brilliant, definately one of the best Christian Philosophers in the country. [Objective, non-nepotistic statement - why does the wife always get accused of that?] However, on Monday, Matt is heading to teachers training college to get a diploma to pursue a second-choice career and we are going to spend a very scary year living on ACC (80% of my income – not nearly enough to live on with my medical expenses that ACC do NOT cover). This income will end the minute I recover and plunge us into a financial hole – the odds of me landing and beginning a new job the minute I am better are not huge… Matt does not qualify for student allowance, we are extremely reluctant to look at welfare anyway given our worldviews.

He could flag the teaching diploma in favour of a low skilled job (his qualifications are in Philsophy after all) but then what would he do – stack supermarket shelves? Pump gas? For how long? If the secondary sector are falling over themselves to nab him and there is nothing on offer by way of permanent, roof-overhead-food-on-table tertiary sector employment it is a no brainer.

So it is going to be a year of living by faith and a path away from where Matt really wants to be, should be, unless something gives.

I am clear on the correct Christian approach to this situation; I have peace and I trust in God’s providence come what may. However, I also have a duty before God to play the hand I have been dealt to the best of my ability; as such, if you are looking for a Philosophy or Theology Lecturer who can teach Theology, Ethics, Apologetics, Critical Thinking, History of Philosophy; we will relocate anywhere in the world. Email Matt for his CV, Transcripts and References and, of course, peruse the blog for writing samples.
[Delete the NOSPAM in the email address before sending]

On the bright side the surgeon is not yet worried about my long term recovery prospects. There is still hope I can improve.

This is very frustrating for Matt and I as I am still fairly useless in terms of my ability to work, parent, blog, run the house and function in general and I still need a lot of care and support and drugs which screw with my brain. Living with ongoing pain and numbness and the limits that causes is very hard to take some days too – not to mention the financial implications.

We have been digesting this for a few days, hence the silence on the blog, but I am determined to get back to as close to normal as possible so Matt should have a few blogs up over the next day or so and I will keep working on doing the same too.

We have not been away due to Madeleine’s recovery, which is unfortunatly not going so well. She was expected to return to work on Thursday and it is looking very likely that she will not as she still has a lot of pain and some numbness in her hands. We are trying to not get too ahead of ourselves as to what this means for the future.

That aside, it has been very nice to take in some sun, go at a slower pace, catch up with friends and family. I have managed to work on some articles, throw out some job applications do some jobs around the house and relax.

Thanks everyone who left messages, sent emails and prayed for us and those who didn’t because they don’t but like PC, sent well wishes instead; the support was really appreciated. Matt read me your comments when I was in hospital and it was really cool.

My head feels a lot clearer now but it is still not 100%. I am still in a lot of pain though and I think that’s going to take a while but the drugs do their thing so it is manageable. Apparently I am supposed to feel well enough to return to full time work in 3 weeks time. It seems hard to believe but if I could be pain free soon that would be great.

Her neck wound is healing well and appears to be smaller than we thought it would be which is good. None-the-less she wants to send me scarf shopping anyway (she wants to cover up the dressing/scar on her neck from the surgery) …. where does a man go scarf shopping without anyone noticing?